First of all, I'll bet convicts to zebra plecos that the fish you normally see in stores are not Nanochromis nudiceps, but are really Nanochromis parilus. This fish has been around the hobby a long time. It is one of those fish that was always "assumed" to be a certain sp. until someone went back to the scientific literature and realized that the so-called "Nudiceps cichlid" in the hobby is really its congener N. parilus.

The two fish really do look similar and some people do not believe they should be two distinct spp. My first question is what is the price? Quite a few pet stores have ordered N. nudiceps at high prices and received N. parilus. They then try to sell the N. parilus for an outrageous sum because they had to pay a lot for them. I have seen N. parilus at two stores in the same town for US $3.99 andUS $39.99. This is because one store ordered them as N. nudiceps ($20.00 wholesale) and the other as N. parilus ($1.99 wholsale).

N. parilus is a great fish. It comes from West Africa and can be kept with other West African cichlids. I have a 100 gallon with Congo tetras, kribs, N. parilus, and Thysochromis ansorgii and they all breed and get along great. The water should be soft and around neutral. Soft water is very important if you want to spawn them.

The biggest problem that I have with the fish is that they have the weakest pair bonding instinct of any cichlid that I have ever kept. Make sure that the female can get away and hide from the male when she needs to. He will kill her if she can not hide. Breeding is also best accomplished in a tank with no other cichlids since their intrusions often break the Nanochromis' pair bond. I let my pairs raise several broods before I put them in a tank with other cichlids or catfishes and even this does not always work.