All good points, Brad. These are not easy fish to replace I'm sure, and in my experience cichlids are way less tolerant of neglect than other fish.
It's odd to me the way people are being so casual about not feeding the fish for 2 weeks. Sure, they CAN go without nutrients for this amount of time, but at what cost? Cichlids are prone to HLLE/HTH from, among other things, not getting fed the right foods, so I would imagine the same would be true of being fed no food at all. It's something that they can survive if it happens, but by no means is it perfectly fine and no problem. Fish don't burn up calories keeping themselves warm like other animals do, but still - you are asking a fish to take all of its stored up resources and expend them for basically no reason. Hunger is something most animals are evolved to withstand but it's, IMO, cruel to make them experience it to this degree if you can help it.
It's odd to me the way people are being so casual about not feeding the fish for 2 weeks. Sure, they CAN go without nutrients for this amount of time, but at what cost? Cichlids are prone to HLLE/HTH from, among other things, not getting fed the right foods, so I would imagine the same would be true of being fed no food at all. It's something that they can survive if it happens, but by no means is it perfectly fine and no problem. Fish don't burn up calories keeping themselves warm like other animals do, but still - you are asking a fish to take all of its stored up resources and expend them for basically no reason. Hunger is something most animals are evolved to withstand but it's, IMO, cruel to make them experience it to this degree if you can help it.
