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I have a 36" tank that I am trying to set up in a central american biotope. I have two Thorichthys Meeki (Firemouth) and a small school of Xiphophorus hellerii (Swordtail). I was hoping to add a couple of Herotilapia multispinosa (Rainbow Cichlids) but have not been able to find any. So I was debating adding another fish from that area possibly a single Cryptoheros nigrofasciatus (Convict). Do you think that as a single without the chance of breeding the aggression level will be low enough with a signle convict not disrupt the tank? Any suggestions for a alternate?
Thanks for any suggestions.

Hi! I'm Raoul, from Romania. About your Central America tank, meeki and xifos are ok, but the convicts are extremely agressive and strong diggers.Your xifos will be terminated So, I don't recomand to keep convicts with the other fish. Instead, you can put in your tank blue rams, or ramirezi. One of my favorite central american cichlids is cleithracara maronii ( keyhole cichlid ). It's a beautiful and peaceful fish. Try it.
Have a nice day!

personally i wouldn't add much more unless it were maybe 2 more firemouths. they do best in the type of setup you currently have but, especially as juveniles, do better in larger groups. you're more likely to see their natural behaviors and beauty if you add a couple more.

I've come late to this, but even so, what I'm about to tell you is going to be extremely useful with respect to successful Cichlid keeping from here on.

Cichlids are highly developed, intelligent fishes, with complex social behaviours, and consequently, these fishes know what they want. One of the biggest mistakes that any newcomer to Cichlids can make, is to try and fit these fishes to the aquarist's plans. Quite often, this approach is doomed to failure, precisely because these fishes know what they want, and if you don't give it to them, they'll exercise surprising amounts of ingenuity ensuring that they get what they want. Or, if the Cichlid species in question happen to be large and aggressive, they'll get what they want courtesy of the judicious application of brutality, namely, exterminating the competition. The way to succeed with any fishkeeping is to ask what the fish wants, and plan around that, but this principle applies with particular strength to Cichlids, because these fishes are resourceful, motivated, and easily capable of making your fishkeeping life a nightmare if you don't perform a lot of prior research into what these fishes want.

One of the key factors to remember is that these fishes are territorial, because they require an 'exclusion zone' they can call their own for breeding. Sex, basically, is the most powerful motivating force in the Animal Kingdom, it's even more motivating than hunger once it takes hold (as anyone familiar with Antechinus marsupials will know all too well), and when offspring are present and requiring care, parental instincts magnify territorial responses enormously. Since the entire reproductive success of Cichlids is based upon acquisition of a suitable territory, within which the pair can enforce an 'exclusion zone' keeping intruders at bay, and within which there is sufficient food for both parents and offspring, Cichlids are highly motivated to stake a claim to the best territory they can grab for the purpose, and if there are obstacles to this, they find ways of overcoming those obstacles. So, the key to success with these fishes is to recognise this fact from the very start, and don't place obstacles in the way of their acquiring a decent piece of aquatic real estate to call their own. Indeed, with this in mind, you should be adopting the venerable Innes maxim of "think like a fish", put yourself in the Cichlid's position, ask yourself "what would I want if I was this fish?", and then set about planning to give the fish what it wants, to the extent that your finances, etc., permit.

Now, what Cichlids tend to want, is their own little private space, where they can get down to the business of courtship, mating, and rearing offspring, with as little interference from rivals as possible. Which means that the first thing you should be providing them with is space. Think of an amount of space, double it, and this is likely to be your baseline amount of space for most Cichlids. Remember that you have to plan not only for the eventual adult size of the fish, which becomes your baseline figure, but you then have to add to that space to accommodate their reproductive territorial needs, and their willingness to kill the opposition if they don't have it. Some Cichlids are relatively co-operative in this respect, and make modest demands upon space, whilst others are far more demanding and far less forgiving. Your Firemouths, for example, being members of the Genus Thorichthys, are actually amongst the least troublesome of the Central Americans, and a pair will happily live in a 36 inch aquarium with a modest number of dither fish companions, though once they start breeding, some of those dither fish are going to be in for a rough ride. At the other extreme, you have the likes of Caquetaia umbriferum, which apart from being a huge, well-muscled bruiser of a fish that even looks like it's been abusing bodybuilding steroids, is extremely motivated to claim a lot of space for itself, and consequently, you'll need something like a 200 gallon tank just for a single breeding pair - anything else in there will be treated as an enemy and ruthlessly exterminated.

Bearing all this in mind, Convict Cichlids were named not only because the colour pattern of the original wild fish resembled a US prison uniform, but because they have a temperament that led many to regard them as aquarium criminals. Which, once again, was due to a failure to recognise that these fishes are motivated to claim a decent amount of real estate for their family lives. Convicts in the wild live in environments where the competition for the best breeding spots is literally cut-throat, and they've developed over millions of years to be feisty, tough, no-nonsense fishes that in appropriate circumstances do not take prisoners. Which is why a 36 inch aquarium is suitable for a breeding pair of Convicts, provided that they're the only fishes in that tank. Anything else dropped into that 36 inch tank with the Convicts has a life expectancy measured in minutes, quite simply because Convicts demand a lot of territory for their size, and have evolved to be prepared to fight for it. Convicts are, funnily enough, considered to be only moderately troublesome amongst Cichlid keepers familiar with certain other species - usually, the next step up from Convicts is the Jack Dempsey, Heros octofasciatus, which was well named after the former World Heavyweight boxing champion for its pugnacity, which inevitably comes into play the moment this fish is placed in a tank that is too small, and alongside the wrong companions. However, even Dempseys are child's play compared to the likes of Caquetaia umbriferum, which will provide the foolhardy aquarist with a crash course in why big, aggressive Cichlids have the bad reputation they have in some circles.

So, I'd leave those Firemouths as they are, and if they turn out to be a breeding pair, make plans to rehouse the Swordtails for the duration, to make life easier for all the fishes concerned. By leaving those fishes with adequate space to strut their stuff, you'll be rewarded with a fine display of Cichlid parental care, with few or none of the aggression headaches. Apply this basic principle, namely give them lots of space, to ALL your Cichlids in future, and you'll nip a lot of the potential maintenance problems in the bud before they become an expensive headache.

The next principle to bear in mind is this, and will become important if you ever wish to keep a mixture of Cichlids together in one aquarium. Cichlids, like you and I, tend to like a bit of privacy now and again, and this is particularly the case when it comes to courtship and mating. You wouldn't want half a dozen males staring at you through the bedroom window as you're about to become intimate with a lady friend, and likewise, quite a few Cichlids prefer it if they can conduct their mating business reasonably free of prying eyes, and, for that matter, rivals. So, the best way to integrate Cichlids is to arrange the decor in such a manner as to break up lines of sight within the aquarium. This way, the Cichlids can have their own piece of real estate, without having to glower constantly at territorial or mating rivals. Draw yourself a bird's eye view of the decor, and work out how to place it so that a fish at one end of the tank can't see a fish at the other end of the tank. Arranging the tank like this sounds as if it violates everything you've heard about aquarium aesthetics, but the whole point here is that what matters is what the fish wants, not you, and if the fish happen to be happy, and coexist peacefully, in an aquarium you think looks like an eyesore, then tough. One of the more challenging aspects of Cichlid keeping, if you're keeping several species together, is arranging the decor to break up lines of sight, and stop the fishes from constantly glowering at each other, whilst still making the end result look acceptable to human eyes. Needless to say, Cichlid keeping tends to be an activity that polarises aquarists for this reason amongst others - some can't abide the hassle, others revel in it.

Basically, if you plan around the fish before stocking the aquarium, and plan on the basis of knowledge of what the fish themselves want in a home, you'll eliminate at least 90% of Cichlid keeping problems at source. You'll have happy, contented fish, that only occasionally let their tempers get the better of them, and internecine warfare will be reduced to a minimum.

While on the subject of Central Americans, allow me to warn you, in advance, of one small Cichlid that you should avoid unless you're willing to give it a species aquarium. This is the pyroclastically bad-tempered little demon known as Neetroplus nematopus. Because it's small (about the same size as your Firemouths), and has a colour pattern in breeding dress reminiscent of the woefully expensive African Tropheus duboisi, you could be mistaken for thinking that this fish is a desirable acquisition. It is, but ONLY if you know how this fish behaves at breeding time, and make sure that it never has the chance to demonstrate this to you on other prized and expensive Cichlids. Basically, Neetroplus nematopus operates on the "search and destroy" principle of eliminating potential threats to its offspring, and both male and female take part in this operation as a combined arms team. This, combined with their ability to perform lightning fast hairpin turns to an extent that has to be seen to be believed, means that they can take on opposition much bigger than themselves. What usually happens is that the male makes the frontal assault, whilst the female dives under the chosen opposition and aims for the soft underbelly. Other fishes soon learn to give this pair of terrors a wide berth, and on those occasions when they've been placed in a mixed Cichlid setup and decided to breed, they've backed an entire tankful of bigger Cichlids into one corner whilst they set about breeding. This is a fish for a species aquarium, where they're unable to unleash their reign of terror upon other unfortunate fishes, and if you ever fancy taking on this little psychopath, be advised that life will never be boring if you do. Indeed, once a pair of Neetroplus has a clutch of offspring on the go, you won't be able to put your hands in the aquarium to perform maintenance, because they'll attack your hands fearlessly and with gusto. Once they're in breeding mode, Neetroplus are complete headbangers, they're little berserkers with NO sense of fear whatsoever, and putting them in with other Cichlids is a BIG mistake once they reach sexual maturity.

Incidentally, with respect to your Firemouths and Swordtails, I'd recommend that you arrange the aquarium decor in such a manner that the Firemouths choose one end of the aquarium as 'home' for breeding purposes, so that the Swordtails can retire to the other end, because if the Firemouths choose to breed in the middle of the aquarium, life for the Swordtails will become pretty stressful. Put a couple of flat pieces of slate and a couple of bogwood caves at one end of the aquarium, and this should tempt the Firemouths to choose that as the desirable piece of real estate. Then, you can arrange some other pieces of decor to provide a sort of 'curtain' fencing off their little family home, so that the Swordtails can hide on the other side out of view without being pestered unduly. The Swordtails aren't stupid, they'll soon get the message that the Firemouths have taken up residence at the other end of the tank, that they mean business about enforcing their property rights, and you'll be able to feed them separately too.

I know this has been another of my huge essay style posts for which I'm infamous around here, but, if you take heed of the above, you should find yourself experiencing far fewer woes during your Cichlid keeping. Remember, finding out what the Cichlids want, and giving it to them, might seem expensive initially, but it'll be a lot less costly than not doing so and seeing World War III break out in the tank. And, if you do it right, you'll recoup the cost selling all those nice juvenile Cichlids that your chosen fish will be producing for you.

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002