20150201 African Cichlids

Until I became exposed and deeply memorized by the marine fish trade, I once considered going hardcore into African Cichlids. They are by far the most vibrant, colorful freshwater fish there is. Not only that, they are also quite hardy. And with the hard, high pH water here in the America Midwest, it is perfect for them.

African cichlids are easy to keep, and many of them are mouth brooders thus easy to breed and raise young. Unfortunately they have earned a bad reputation for being aggressive. Not only that, because of what people perceive as their aggressiveness, they also tend to offer them improper diet- Most African cichlids are primarily vegetarians but many people offer diet closer to the carnivore range.

The truth is, much like many marine fish, African cichlids are extremely territorial and requires a large range of space between each other, especially if they are nesting for comfort and security. For this reason, if you are overstocking the fishtank they can't help but squabble and display aggressiveness. While the tank above stocks quite a few of them for display purpose, for the long term health of the fish and tank, a tank of this size should really host no more than a three to four pairs of cichlids. And no, they aren't really community fish.

20140613-Tank moving 3

Here is the peaceful group. All fish featured in this post are the best community fish one can find. They are also all very hardy*
The blue-eye cardinals are not rare, but they are also not very common in stores as they are one of the pricier cardinals. on the other hand, the bangaii cardinal is almost reaching goldfish status in saltwater (the percula clown already has). They are hardy, peaceful, and very easy to breed. People can often rear young's in their tanks since they are mouth brooders.

The fire fish are elegant, and fun to look at. They are also very peaceful and hardy- so peaceful that you must not keep them with any aggressive fish, especially with an open top tank, because they can "fly" out of the tank with ease.

The ranfordii Goby is inexpensive, cute, low maintenance and hardy. I put an asteric on the word hardy previously because they do have a specific requirement- You must have sugar grained size sandy bottom as their main diet is filter feeding the sand. Crushed coral and larger grain aragonite sand won't do because they cannot take it through their gill.