shane4keasha wants to know:
I have a 55 Gallon Tank. I am wanting to redo my tank. I would order the African Cichlids online where they would be overnighted. I am just curious because I don’t want to spend a ton of money, and they kill each other.
I have a 55 Gallon Tank. I am wanting to redo my tank. I would order the African Cichlids online where they would be overnighted. I am just curious because I don’t want to spend a ton of money, and they kill each other.
October 9th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Your tank size will make a BIG difference in what you can keep and what will work together. What size do you have?
A more hard to find species, but see if you can find what are called sardine cichlids. It’s Cyprichromis *something*, I don’t remember off the top of my head, but you should be able to Google some pics and care info using sardine cichlid. The smaller ones of these only get about 3 inches, so you don’t need a really big tank for them. These aren’t like the other Africans that are agressive, but a schooling species. Pretty too, and one of the most peaceful kinds. But because they aren’t aggressive, you have to watch what you mix with them.
You might get a good idea of some combinations for different sizes of tanks at the Cichlid Forum
October 9th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
This isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can answer directly really. Peaceful is a very relative term when it comes to Africans. More peaceful then others is probably better put. Labidochromis Careleus is probably the most peaceful I’ve seen or kept personally, but there are 1000’s out there so there could well be something better in terms of aggression, I don’t know.
How they get along with each other, is usually related to two things. One is your tank size, and the other is the number of males in the tank. The bigger the tank size, the more flexibility you have and less attention you have to focus on your count of males. Males just don’t get along with other males very well. That’s a product of African cichlid keeping, but the more space you have to placate those aggressive males, the better your chances of keeping multiple males in a tank.
Your types of Africans as well matters. Mbuna stay mostly in the substrate, and with a large enough tank you could easily keep Haps or Peacocks, sometimes both, with Mbuna and not have to worry much about the males.
Good point about Kribensis yes. In an overall point of view it’s not a bad choice, except for one aspect. When breeding time comes, this species actually gets a little more aggressive then others, because they are an egg laying species, and watch over a large area, and will defend it very aggressively, much like Convicts. A mouth brooder is a little different and in my opinion, not quite as aggressive. A mouth brooder male will only chase people off a smaller site when he’s trying to lure a female to spawn, and once done, the aggression level goes down, as well as the carrying female pretty much tries to avoid most aggression while carrying a brood. From my point of view, at least in terms of spawning, this makes Kribensis a little higher on the aggression scale for me.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I agree that “peaceful” is a relative term in the African cichlid world. None are really non-aggressive. Probably the most gentle would be the Electric yellow Labs (Labidochromis caeruleus ), Rusty Cichlids (Iodotropheus sprengerae), or Aceis (Pseudotropheus sp.). All 3 normally get along well with each other, but you will still need to adjust the number of fish based on male to female ratio (you want more females than males) and tank size.
October 12th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Have we all forgotten about Kribensis? I mean they’re an African Cichlid that’s fairly peaceful, keep em in a community tank & stuff… Other than that, the posters about really covered it all
They hit it dead on