So I received a nice box in the mail today! (from mike205)

Well it looks like you have plenty of hiding places so fingers crossed for ya.

Those guys did great... until the hurricane and earthquake came thru and we had a solid week without power... Coming back home after no power for a week was not a pretty site. I put my family up in a hotel for the duration, I put my koi and angels in the bathtub. With the +100lbs of rock in the cichlid tank, I couldn't even begin to fish them out to rehome them anywhere else... The Nicholsi and Mainganos turned out to be the hardiest of a very hardy group of cichlids. I may have lost one or two of the Nicholsi, but the water conditions in the 75G were horrible when I got back home and they were all gulping air. My mistake was in trying to get the koi and angels out of the only bathtub in the house so the family could return to normalcy. That meant letting the cichlid tank go south for another 24 hours. I was at work during the second day that we had power back when my wife told me that it looked like more fish were dying in the cichlid tank. On top of the massive die off that happened during the power outtage, in the last 24 hours I lost 20 more juve cichlids and the one big yellow Lab that started me on the road to cichlids. I lost every single last maingano and all of the brichardis. I was down to just 6 Nicholsi.

The only good thing that happened, and I still don't know exactly why, was the colors came thru in the Nicholsi like I've never seen before. I don't know if it was the water conditions, or the lack of lighting or what, but I've never seen them so bright and intensely colored. The coloring has since dulled back down with them being returned to clean water and a well light tank.

Between the earthquake and the hurricane, that was a very poop week up here in Richmond Virginia. The picture that the national news painted was total dogshit.

Yes quite a few people lost their finned friends,