Napier Aquarium

Chiclids tank at the Aquarium...

Looks a tad overstocked

It was very full I commented on that and a staff member said, "Oh thats how they are in the wild"...

yes but one fish pissing in lake malawi doesnt make a difference that tank is hardly lake malawi, they should have tha number it would look nicer

I wouldn't be too harsh on the stocking levels here - Malawi cichlid tanks are generally run at much higher stocking levels than other tropical freshwater tanks and overfiltered to compensate. If you stocked Malawis at the same densities as you would similarly sized cyprinids or characins they would have room in the tank to form territories and would start to defend them against each other, with messy results unless the tank is huge.

The earlier photo of Napier's tank does look like it's taken this approach too far, but it is standard husbandry for Malawis to be 'overstocked' - as seen below:


http://www.zoochat.com/767/malawi-cichlid-exhibit-palms-final-visit-169067/
http://www.zoochat.com/577/african-journey-lake-malawi-cichlids-exhibit-156060/


The thing that always annoyed me when I kept them was that you also had to rearrange the rockwork when you added new fish so that if any of the existing fish had favourite hides or feeding spots then were disrupted - meaning the new fish would not be at risk of being harmed in a fit of territorial envy. Meant that whenever you found a nice rock setup you had to keep thinking about what you'll do next time you're going to add fish!