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Im considering purchasing a pair of cockatoo cichlids for my acquarium.
I currently have a tank mainly stocked my various coloured rams and rummy nose tetra's.
Has anybody got any cockatoo cichlids?
If so can you advise me on what colours are available in them, and also whether they are a good choice for a community tank.

Some photos would be helpful

Thanks

I used to have some, and they are a great little fish. As far as I know they come in standard and a red colour. Your better though putting in one male and about 4 or 5 females, with a small cave for each.

Here is a picture of my male cockatoo:

This one is called Double Red. The other colour available is the Orange Flash. You can do an image search in google to find how they look like.

And now, a picture of a female:

Females have a yellow tint to their bodies and are not as colourful as the males.

In my experience keeping cacs with rams can be tricky. I'm not saying it's impossible, I have rams with cacs at the moment, but the outcome depends on the personality of all fish involved. Generally speaking, I have found out that cacs are nastier than rams, especially female cacs, especially when there's a male cac around.

Cacs approach to territories is different than that of the rams. Each female claims a territory centred around a cave. They don't like other fish being too close to the cave, especially other cichlids, and will chase them away. The male sees as the whole territory around his females as his own territory . If there is one female, he will cruise the whole tank and visit his female occasionally, show her who's the boss, and move on until the next time.

The situation when rams are around can be tricky, as I said. I think it mainly depends how many rams you already have and what size is your tank.[/font][/font]

Last edited by untitled at 05-Apr-2005 07:26

ive been researching these as im concidering breeding them. if you have any specific questions i could prolly link you to a number of sites with information.

There are several varieites of this fish...any specific one you're looking for?

Off the top of my head:
orange flash
single/double/triple red depending on the size and brilliance of the red streaks.
White