newbie seeks veteran south american cichlid keepers advice

[endrasgarden]

Hi,

I am looking to setup a 55 gallon tank in the next couple of weeks, and I've got a couple questions. I hope someone can help. I have a little experience keeping cichlids, but it's been years and I don't think I was doing it right back then (too many fish, not enough space according to what i've been researching recently), so i'm basically a newbie.

Initially I wanted to get an oscar, but when I realized that I could only keep one dude in a 55g tank I started looking at other species. I've been to most of my local fish stores and asked a bunch of questions, and I've scoured the web looking for information about cichlids. There's a lot of great information out there, but there's also a lot of conflicting opinion. Some people have said that you should start out with enough fish for what would eventually be a pretty cramped tank (by calculating future max fish length and gallons of tank), and that some of them will die off and you'll end up with a couple of big survivors that live a pretty long time and may even breed. Other's have said to just purchase one or a pair of cichlids (the amount that you would like to eventually end up with) and just replace them or start over if they die. Which of these is correct? I have been considering a few tank plans for each of these philosophies.

First tank layout:

55g tank
Only the strong survive:
1 green terror, red terror, or jack dempsey
and/or
2 (male/female) convict fish
2 (male/female) firemouth cichclids

can you keep firemouths and convicts together in a 55g tank? if so how many? is the bigger fish too much?

Second tank layout:
Our enterprise is a success:
1 or 2 jack dempeys, green terrors, red terrors, oscars, jaguars etc.


Any advice? What would be a good cichlid tank setup for a 55g tank. I'm not looking to upgrade for years.


I hope you can help

 

[silver dollars]

All the fish that you listed but the convicts can't go in the 55gal. They will out grow the tank. The only bad thing about the convicts are that they will breed like crazy. There are smaller, more peaceful SA cichlids like Rams, Apistos, and keyhole cichlids.

 

[endrasgarden]

All the fish that you listed but the convicts can't go in the 55gal. They will out grow the tank. The only bad thing about the convicts are that they will breed like crazy. There are smaller, more peaceful SA cichlids like Rams, Apistos, and keyhole cichlids.

even the firemouths?

 

[Pure]

55g tank
Only the strong survive:
1 green terror, red terror, or jack dempsey
and/or
2 (male/female) convict fish
2 (male/female) firemouth cichlids

This tank will end up with one fish in the end. And if you think about it, this is a terrible thing to knowingly do. SA/CA cichlids are not like Africans you can't put a bunch of them together and hope that there are enough fish to even out aggression levels. Most of them get to large to do this with. Bio-load is heavy enough that if you have a tank large enough for multiple species you have a tank probably around 1500 gallons. This would be large enough to provide specific territories for individual fish. So even then your not stocking them like Africans.

Second tank layout:
Our enterprise is a success:
1 or 2 jack Dempsey, green terrors, red terrors, Oscars, jaguars etc.

For a 55 gallon you need to choose 1 kind of large aggressive SA/CA fish. Be warned that in a tank as small as a 55 that you don't have enough room for a pair of large fish. The bio-load would be too much and there isn't enough room. For example 1 male and 1 female jaguar cichlid would most likely end in 1 fish being beaten to death. They may be fine until they spawn then who knows the male might turn on the female or vice-versa.

Or you can keep 2-3 6-7 inch fish like fire mouths, Electric Blue JDs, and Severums. Uh some more smaller cichlids that aren't too aggressive would be the rainbow cichlid, blue acaras, Geos, Yellow acara, Honduran Redpoints..just to name a few.

Or you can ditch the macho fish need and get 5-7 discus. lol