I'm glad to see you are upgrading your tank because that Ahli is way too aggressive and will get too large for your 29 gallon. You would have had dead fish.

I am not trying to be rude at all as I have tried to help along the way, but I gotta say something before you end up killing a whole lot of fish.

You knew you were not done cycling and you knew you just had a huge spike. yet instead of waiting another week or two, you went out and added a bunch more bio-load by buying three fish. I gotta say, man, that was pretty irresponsible. I know you believe your test strips, but you can't cycle a tank from scratch in two weeks. It just doesn't happen. You also need to do a bunch more research on the species you buy rather than getting what the gf thinks looks cool. There are alot of really cool looking cichlids that will destroy your tank in a week. And if the LFS guy told you you could put an Electric Blue Ahli in a 29 gallon tank, I would never return to that store or ask him for advice again. Electric Blue Ahli's get to be 8". You just added two fish that will get 8" (and cichlids grow fast) and that are mean suckers.

You also can NEVER stock just two cichlids with the types you are putting in there. It is either one or four. Since you bought two, one of two things is going to happen in your tank (especially since the tank is small):

1) They are both males - in this case the dominant one will just kill of the subdominant one

2) One is a male and one is a female - the male will relentlessly chase this female until she dies of exhaustion.

You MUST keep either one of each species or stock them in a 1 male per 3-4 females ratio. That way, the male's chasing will be spread around to the females.

I'm sorry for the bluntness. You know I am a helpful person, but you have to be more responsible with cichlids. These are large aggressive fish and you can't just go to the store and throw in whatever you want, especially when you are trying to get through a cycle.

Anyway, good luck and hopefully you listen to some of my advice. I want you to enjoy cichlids and have them for many years, but your track record so far is not looking like that will happen.

you should never finish stocking a tank unless it is fully cycled and well established.

Sorry for misreading your post. I am glad to hear that you did not put two Alhi's in there. However, even the one is not good for a 29 gallon. If you upgrade then it is fine to keep him, but if you're not going to do so soon, I would take him back. They are very cool (I have one), but he will wreak havoc on your tank size.

Now, about the stocking thing. In the future, it would be helpful to think of the cycle as an ongoing thing. What you are doing is building up enough bacterial colonies to convert ammonia to nitrite and then to the less toxic nitrate. This is ongoing all the time. Even though you are reading 0 ppm on ammonia, it doesn't mean it's not being produced. It means it is being produced and then quickly converted.

Now, let's say your cycle is done and you throw in ten fish at the same time (just for an example). The colonies you have established will not be enough to convert this increased load fast enough and you will see another spike. This is why you always want to stock your tank slowly and do regular water changes.

During the cycle, things are walking on a thin line (especially since your spike got so high). If you disrupt this balance before your colonies are even mature, you risk throwing the whole thing into another mess. There is no such thing as a first spike. If you went out and added several more fish today, you may very well get a spike higher than the original one associated with the cycle.

It doesn't help now, but in the future just try to be patient when adding fish during the cycle. Start out with a couple and then don't add anything for a month or so. Then slowly start to stock your tank up.

The only other thing I'll say is to make absolute sure you research your cichlids before you bring them home. What I do is go to the store and see what they have. If I see one I like, but don't know anything about, I'll go home and see if it will fit into my environment. If it won't then I leave it alone. There are five billion beautiful cichlids that will fit with what you have so there is no reason to add something that won't. In your case I would have gone home and read that the Ahli gets to be 8". That alont rules it out for a 29 gallon tank. However, even if I had ignored that, I would have seen that they are much more aggressive than the other species in my tank and I would have left him at the store.

With a 29 gallon, you especially have to be careful because many cichlids will get too large for your tank and/or too aggressive. If you upgrade to a 70 gallon or something then you'll have alot more flexibility in your choices.

Anyways, sorry again for the misread on my part. It still is important to stock slowly though and make sure you make good species choices.

Yeah, 50 would be fine. Mine is a 58. As long as you provide lots of rocks and hiding spots, that would be a good size for a cichlid tank.

What are the dimensions of the tank? Do you know?

Without knowing those (the footprint matter more than the height with cichlids so you can't keep as many in a 20 gallon high as a 20 gallon for instance), I would say you could keep around 14 normal sized mbunas (this is assuming an adult size of 5" - if you have fish like the Electric Blue Ahli that get 8" then you'll need to adjust this number).

When your fish are juveniles it will feel like it is understocked. Mine looked empty for the first couple of months, but cichlids grow fast and they will soon reach their adult size. Once they do, your tank will be very active with this many fish. You have to account for adult size when figuring out how many to stock, not what size they are now. Trust me, it will fill out quickly.

Demasoni are really cool, but a little tricky to. There are two things to know about them.

1) You either have to keep a single demasoni or you have to keep 8-10 (or more) together. If you keep 3, 4, 5, or something like that, the dominant male will pick of each one until he is the only one left. They're not like other mbunas in the regard of stocking a 1 male to 3-4 female ratio. It just doesn't work as they are hyper aggressive towards their own species. Since I doubt you want 8-10 of them, I would just get a single one. (Also note that they will view all other blue striped cichlids as fellow demasonis. Therefore, you can't keep anything else that looks like it either or that fish will be toast).

2) There is a TON of variance in their individual aggressiveness. I have heard stories about a single demasoni that just tore up a whole tank of different species. Then I hear that a person's demasoni does just fine with everything. The first case where you get a demasoni that just kills your other species is very rare from what I can see and these few outliers are what give them their horrible reputation. More often than not, you'll be fine, but you need to be aware that you could get one of these hyper aggressive individuals. You just need to watch him.

One good thing is that demasoni are a dwarf cichlid so they only reach adult sizes of 3-3.5". As long as you stay away from species that look like him and make the other species start out larger (and assuming you don't get one of the crazy outliers) then you should be cool. Just watch out for him.

Also, put him in last. You want to stock your tank from the least aggressive species to the most. This way, the less aggressive species have time to form territories and get adjusted before the aggressive suckers jump in. If you stock the super aggressive one first then he'll already have his territory and will make life hell on the newly added less aggressive species.