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When I first found out about shell dwelling fish, I was fascinated. Here was an animal that lived in a snail shell. I remember well my first days of watching Black Ocellatus move snail shells and then completely bury them except for just the opening. It was fascinating to watch, but I was unable to donate any tank space to that fish at that time. However, I did spend time learning about other shell-dwelling fish, and found out that there were many other shell-dwelling species, some with even more interesting behavior than the Ocellatus. While the Ocellatus is a very aggressive species, and does not tolerate it’s young past a certain size, there are other shell-dwelling cichlids that group together in communities. The similis and multifasciatus are species known to do this and both species are both a joy to keep due to their small size and patterned coloration.

The peculiarities of shell-dwelling fish are many. In most cases, they become more pronounced when the fish is breeding. I’ve always felt that the reason to do freshwater fish over saltwater is the fact that they will much more easily show interesting behavior. The multifasciatus is another great example of a small fish that is easy to care for, takes up very little space, and shows lots of interesting behavior. This article will first give some basic background on how to set-up a tank to keep multifasciatus, and then it will outline some of the behavior I’ve seen while breeding the multifasciatus. However, you can rest assured there are still plenty of cool things to watch beyond the few I’ve included below.

Keeping Neolamprologus Multifasciatus

Since multifasciatus are shell-dwellers, the first thing I’d recommend is that you have shells in the tank. I’ve had good success with many different types of snail shells and would recommend any shell 1" across or larger, be they from terrestrial, freshwater, or saltwater snails. In addition you will want to use sand as the substrate of the aquarium. Preferably use cleaned sand, the same type of sand as is used in saltwater aquariums will be fine, but if you are hard pressed silica sand will do. Just make sure that you don’t have any fish with barbells or they will be cut up by the rough edges of the silica sand. You will of course want to have a filter and heater. Any heater should do, but you will need to be a bit more particular with the filter. Since the multifasciatus will dig to the bottom of the sand, no matter how deep it is, an undergravel filter will not function properly. You may in addition find fry living in the undergravel filter if you use an undergravel filter. Power filters work fine, but be aware that they are prone to sucking in fry to a floss grave unless you do something to prevent that from happening. (a foam sleeve like the ones used for Fluval filters works well as a preventative measure on power filter intake tubes) What I’ve used with great success is a foam corner filter that is pump driven. These filters are easy to service, and pose no threat to the young.

In addition to the shells and sand you will be unable to add many decorations. River rock can be added and arranged to provide different mini-territories. In a large tank, this can provide a lot of interesting behavior. You can also try plants, but be aware that with the constant digging of the multifasciatus, you’ll often find your plants floating unless well waited down, and live plants will have a very difficult time surviving.

The multifasciatus does not require any specific food. You can feed them pellets, flake, freeze-dried, frozen or live food. Though no specific food is needed for breeding, I would recommend using a pellet food after the fish has breed for ease of feeding the fry. The fry will readily take newly-hatched brine shrimp, but they will just as readily take the particles left over from the pellets you feed the parents. Since clutches of multifasciatus fry are relatively small, 4-30 young per breeding, you can easily raise them on their parent’s leftovers without worrying about losing any to hunger.

Other than that, you won’t need anything more to keep and raise multifasciatus. I would recommend that you don’t keep other fish with them if you are trying to raise them in a small aquarium. I do keep snails with mine as they help to make sure no food rots and thereby pollutes the aquarium. Starting with 4-5 youngsters should provide you with at least one male and female. Once you have a dominant breeding male, remove the other males, and just sit back and watch. A lot of interesting behavior will be soon in coming. I’ve listed some of the most interesting that I’ve seen, but there are many others.

Multifasciatus Behaviors

Territorial Shell Burying-One of the most interesting behaviors of the multifasciatus is its desire to bury the shells that it is not using as its home(s). When you put all the snail shells in the tank with the multifasciatus, the male multifasciatus will pick out a shell, and he will then bury shells that he is not using under the sand. The male multifasciatus is a harem breeder. He will breed with a number of females, and he will uncover a shell for each female he has in his harem.  Sometimes he will also keep a couple of shells around for the young.

Snail Removal-Snails are useful in removing uneaten food, but they also can be a hazard, as they will eat the shell-dwellers eggs. However, the multifasciatus recognizes the threat that the snails present, and is diligent at removing them. If you watch a tank with shell-dwellers in it, you will see them clamping onto snails with their mouths and moving them literally across the aquarium. This not only interesting to watch, but also amazing to consider. Most of the common small snails that we routinely keep, either by invitation or not, are not from Africa where the multifasciatus makes its home. In Lake Tanganyika, the multifasciatus home, most of the snails are larger, and that is in part why shell-dwelling species have been able to adapt to their environmental niche. Keeping this in mind, it is very interesting to watch the multifasciatus remove the Malaysian live-bearing snail, which is a small burrowing snail that provides a great threat to shell-dwellers eggs. These snails are not from the same continent as the multifasciatus, yet the multifasciatus will immediately remove the threat though it may be completely unfamiliar with that specific snail.

Breeding and Raising Young in Shells-To breed the multifasciatus, you won’t need a large aquarium, a 10-gallon tank will work fine. I have kept over 50 multifasciatus of various sizes in the same 10-gallon aquarium with very good success. It however, the first few groups that can give a look into the breeding of this fish. The female lays her eggs in the snail shell, and the male will fertilize them there. After mating, the male will guard the shell vigilantly. The young usually hatch in 6-10 days, but you may not see them for a good while after that. For the first week or so, the fry will not move more than 1" out of the snail shell that is there home. If you look closely, you’ll see the fry moving about in the shell, but often even advanced aquarists are surprised when they see 3-week old free-swimming fry. After leaving the shell, the young will stay close to the shell for another 4-6 weeks. After that time has passed, you will see the young start to branch out and take possession of any nearby shells that are not buried in the sand.

To breed the multifasciatus, you won’t need to do anything more than just put mature members of each sex, (1 ½") together in a tank. However, if you are having trouble, trying doing a 50% water change with water that is 2-3° F warmer than the water in your tank, and they should breed within a few days.  Be aware that if the aquarium is not large enough, the males will fight among themselves, which can lead to the death of one or more of your males.

Community Living-One of the most interesting aspects of the multifasciatus is its community structure. The fish will live in small groups within the aquarium. If you have a very large tank, you may see groups break off from the main group and colonize a new area of the tank. Of course you need a fairly large aquarium, 60 gallon+,  to see this, but the possibility is exciting. Within each group you will see many different age classes. The disadvantage can be that it’s difficult to determine whether a particular fish is a male or female by just looking at its size. A larger fish is normally a male, and a smaller fish is normally a female.  However, with 5-10 consecutive batches of fry living together, the smaller fish may just be a male from the next batch.  In addition to attempting to sex the fish by size, you can also do so by color.  Breeding females are always much lighter in color, typically white, while dominant males are a sandy grey.    The good thing about all this is that though it is often difficult to sex the fish, it’s easy to raise many generations together, and you get to watch more of what happens in nature.

Summary

I’ve really only scratched the surface here as to the excitement of this fish. Of all the tanks I have at home, the ones with the shell-dwellers in them are the ones I tend to look at most often due to all the interesting intricacies they have to offer. I highly recommend trying them if you haven’t had the opportunity to keep them before.