Africans and central americans

[tino giardina]

hey,

I went to the LFS today to get some fish to fill my 6x2x2 foot tank. I currently have 2oscars 7-8"
1 Jack dempsey, 1 texas and 1 green terror all about 5".

Anyway i asked him for wot types of fish he would recomend to fill the tank. 1 was called a venutus, Pseudotropheus Socolofi, Melonchromis Auratus and another which i dont know the name of. There all about 2" in size.

After a few hours i went to check on them and the venutus was biting at the dorsal fins of one of the oscars.

I then looked at the species profile and found that they are african cichlids. My question is do u think i should take them back as they might stress my americans, and water conditions etc are different. Or should i leave them in there.

Regards

[Z Man]

Africans certainly don't belong in a American cichlid tank! The Oscar will only take that for a while and then make a meal of them or just plain kill them.

[Reiner]

The Venustus might do ok but would be better of in a African only tank but the Auratus and the Socolofi are vegetarians and need to be fed foods with Vegetable matter or they will develop Malawi Bloat which will kill them. Sadly many fish store employees will tell you anything in order to make a sale or don't know anything about fish in the first place. It's really better to keep the 2 continents separated.

[tino giardina]

Yeah thats wot i thought, im gonna take em bak to the LFS

Thanks for ur replys

[Harry Tolen]

Your instinct to take back the Africans is correct. They will never co-exist with your Central and South Americans comfortably, for a number of reasons.

Rather than add more cichlids to your tank, however, you might want to consider a school of target fish, such as silver dollars or bala sharks (5-6 of each). They will help disperse aggression adn give the cichlids something to worry about besides each other. However, because of the fairly substantial size of your existing fish collection, you would need to buy fairly large individuals (3-4"), as opposed to very small (1-2") fish.

Also, some synodontis catfish such as angelicus, ocellatus, decorus, or eupterus would help keep the bottom clean and would be well able to take care of themselves.

Good luck.