South American & African cichlids together?

[IronRyno]

Why are African cichlids considered so aggressive as compared to the South American ones? It seems to me that the South Americans get bigger, therfor, wouldn't they be the more likely to kill or hurt another fish? Especially a smaller African that may be picking a fight? I've had 2 blue cobalt cichlids in with a larger jd for about a month now. So far, no problems. The 2 cobalts do scrap quite a bit though. What's the real deal on Africans vs. South Americans?

55g
(2) blue cobalt - 6"
(1) jd - 8"

 

[Cichlid-Man]

I think a major factor can be found in the wild. There are so many packed into one area, that they need to be aggressive to defend their small territory, this of course mostly pretaining to Mbuna. Territories are always changing, and they only hold a small bit at a time....so they defend it.

No doubt that a few SA/CA cichlid species could take on africans easy, they do have the size and a lot of the times the temper. Red Devils live up to their names

JDs can get mean too, they weren't named after a famous boxer for nothing I guess it depends on the individual fish's personality.

 

[radamsk1]

I agree with what Cichlid-man said. They are a bit more confined than the SA/CA cichlids are. Although they're in a big lake and SA/CA are in nice big rivers. Many times these fish can just flee to another area, but Africans would have a bit of a harder time to go somewhere else without running into another cichlid. However, I've found many CA cichlids with horrific temperaments, and some that were gentle as can be. There's usually just a generalization about the temperament, but it can be an extreme on either end. I've found mbuna or African cichlids to stay true to an overall constant level of aggression and temperament. But I think truthfully, if you pick the nastiest of temperaments, that would be the CA's like the Red Devil, Managuense, Texas, Wolf, Midas, Oscar, Salvini, Uaru, Green Terror, Red Terror, etc. They'd definitely kick some *ss against an African Cichlid due to their size mostly.