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I posted a topic in the american cichlid forum about this unidentified cichlid i got on friday. I put him in 4 Foot tank with 6 blue tetras. These tetras are very fast and constantly swimming so i thought they would be too fast for him to catch. Turns out i'm wrong. All the tetras are healthy and active, and last night he killed one. I think he sits quietly and waits for them to swim past, then lunges. I watched him doing this and he nipped one on the tail. He is a tan brown colour with a black horizontal stripe and brown vertical patchy stripes. He has a very sloping head, large eye close to the top of his head, 1-2 inches long (at the moment). What should i do in the mean time to stop him attacking my tetras? Anyone have any ideas about what he is? oh and he is well fed - i saw him eating the fish food i gave him, and there is some left over in the tank that wasn't eaten.

I responded to the thread in American cichlids with a guess as to the cichlid's identification.

sounds like you either need to remove the cichlid or the tetras. sounds like the cichlid wants to eat the tetras, and if this is the case it most likely won't stop until it's eaten all of them. if you keep them together you're likely to wind up with just the cichlid.

ok, under control for now, i've separated him/her with a temporary barrier from the others. Thanks for the reply in the american cichlid forum, i will discuss his/her identification in that forum. I was worried because i couldn't move either him or the tetras to a different tank.

It could be the arataurus or the pearl chichlid. I saw two others... maybe I can tell you about them later.