Keeping African Cichlids - Guide To African Cichlid Care
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African cichlids are one of the most beautiful and brightly colored freshwater fish. You will be hard-pressed to find a saltwater fish that can match its range of colors.
However, African cichlids are also well known among aquarist for their aggression and territorial behavior and hence, they can be difficult to care for when not handled properly. If you are going to keep them with other community fishes or cichlids, you need to pay extra attention to the issue of water requirement and compatibilities with other cichlid species.
Do Not Mix Fishes From Different Regions
Firstly, you will need to ensure that the fishes in your aquarium come from waters with similar pH level. African cichlid comes from three main African lakes: Lake Malawi, Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika. The general idea here is to not mix cichlids from different lakes as the pH level of the water are not the same.
The same logic goes with all the other fishes in you aquarium. Do your research beforehand and ensure that the fishes in your aquarium live in similar water condition before putting them together.
Keep Fishes With Similar Temperament
Secondly, after considering water compatibility, you will need to look at their temperament. One of the most complex and problematic issues surrounding cichlid is their behavior towards other cichlids. You will find that most cichlid display "selective aggression", meaning that they are only aggressive towards the same species or species that bears close resemblance to them.
The rationale here is that cichlids perceives similarity as a threat to their survival (compete for the same food, same partner, same territorial preference, etc). Thus, the general idea here is to not mix cichlids of similar color or shape as they are perceived as a threat.
There is no hard and fast rule to cichlid care. No rule dictates that "Species X" cannot co-exist with "Species Y". A good idea would be to keep fishes from similar parts of the world together and not mix them around with fishes from other regions. Again, this does not imply that it would be safe to put fishes from the same locality together: Do they look alike? Is it perceived as a threat by the other party? Examine all these questions and you will enjoy better success in caring for cichlids!
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Dorothy Fisher says:
4 months ago
In this article you provided, it is indeed a great help to people like me who wants to know more about African cichlids. Thanks for sharing your guideline on how to keep African cichlids and how to breed this kind of specie.