Hi my name is Juan, I've read this forum for years but never posted here (at least that I can remember). I wanted to introduce myself briefly and ask a question.
I'm a 'recovering fish nut' who once worked in a LFS way back in my youth, (is this how a lot of people become fish addicts?) I have had cichlid tanks almost continuously since that time, back around 1990, so about 25 years. At the peak of my "insanity" I had a big collection, though pitiful by the standards of some of the amazing setups I've seen on here. I had a large heated outdoor pond with numerous Central and South American cichlids, arowana, clown knife etc., plus four large-"ish" tanks, one outdoor on the porch and 3 indoor, and 3 or 4 smaller tanks used for hospitals, raising fry etc. Needless to say all this was trying the patience of my wife! I was breeding managuans and I also wrote a few articles for aquarium trade magazines, which I made a little money on to help defray the costs of all this (at least in theory - hahaha). It all required a huge amount of energy to maintain, not least due to the need of continued management of all the aggressive cichlids as growth-spurts and personality changes suddenly shifted the delicate balance of power in each little 'arena', though I was pretty good keeping that balance. I had the 'fever' but I also thought I had some kind of gift at keeping the damn things thriving and preventing them from killing one another, I thought in my hubris that I knew everything about cichlids. It lasted until hurricane Katrina at the end of 2005.
Miraculously, some of the fish survived the storm, one tank, a 75 gallon in my front room, had a large male managuan and about 10 silver dollars in it. All other fish had been devoured by the managuan but he couldn't catch the silver dollars. The floodwater in the house had been up to within an inch of the top of the tank, but the fish somehow had survived a month of no power and no circulation in the stifling heat. How, I have no idea. I was busy one day with the dreary task of removing intact belongings from the house (it's amazing how many things in your house are above four feet high) and while the tank, like everything else, was covered in flood-muck, I kept seeing these flashes which I finally realized were the silver dollars dodging yet another lunge from the Mag. In spite of the extreme difficulties involved at that time, I managed to rescue these creatures and keep them alive though the various events of that year.
Eventually I got a bit more challenging job which took up much more of my time. We moved several times and after some traveling around ended up back in New Orleans in another part of town (an area on higher ground which never flooded). I wanted to keep my little friend the managuan, who was named Pablo Escobar, but it was challenging as he had outgrown my only remaining large-ish tank, the 75 gal I'd recovered from my old place, and due to the need to rebuild our life and so on, I couldn't afford to buy a big new tank. I put the mag and the silver dollars in an outdoor pond, an above-ground wooden framed pond. Meanwhile I stocked the 75 with some peacock cichlids and a few synuspillum catfish.
But it seemed like I'd lost my knack. After about a year some unknown creatures devoured the fish in the pond (and destroyed a big power-filter), I'm pretty sure it was raccoons but I'm not sure, it could have been large water birds or a particularly bold cat, Pablo was pretty aggressive but who knows. Then the nice looking half-grown peacocks started dying in my 75 gal for unknown reasons, and another 55 gal tank I was maintaining in an office turned green and I couldn't seem to fix that either. I thought I knew everything about fish tanks but it was starting to dawn on me that I actually had a lot to learn. I started selling and giving away my tanks and was down to a single 40 gal cube which is in my little office, with a few community fish in it.
Even that tank wasn't doing well. Fish kept dying, and my wife would make wry comments. I was at a loss. I finally figured out the water quality in the tank had declined a lot and the Nitrates had gotten to apparently dangerous levels. I think in the old days I had just messed around with the tanks so much, moved everything around and inevitably, emptied and refilled the tanks so often, that I'd never had a problem with Nitrates in the past. Also with a less fast -paced lifestyle and more of my life spent at work (and sometimes out of state on job-sites for weeks on end), I think subjective time was just passing more quickly for me as it does when you reach middle age, and I no longer paid enough attention to the tank.
About six months ago I finally got the tank working properly again with some systematic water changes. I even got some plants growing in it. Nothing to brag about by any means, but the tank has transitioned, it ceased to be a minor chore and a depressing reminder of failure, and for the first time in years, it started to be fun again.
That is what brought me here. Now that I've turned over my new leaf, and trying to be realistic about what I can actually handle in terms of time and investment. The tank I have has a few community fish, the star of which is an eartheater cichlid of some kind. I think it's a brasiliensis but I'm not certain. I came back to this site, which I hadn't seen in years, trying to figure out what kind of fish he (or she) was. I learned here of the bewildering variety of these interesting creatures. In my mad youth I only appreciated the most violent, territorial and aggressive fish due to my youthful insanity. How I envied my friend who had turned his swimming pool into a pond for ferocious umbee's and dovii. But now I'm well aware of my own limitations, and I have no interest in trying to cope with an umbee unless I win the lottery. I remember my very favorite fish from the peak of my madness, was a quite mellow Green Terror we called 'Maeve', who caused very little trouble aside from disagreeing with my wife over how the tank should be decorated. I really don't want to see fish fight or to manage aggression, I really never did, I just found the aggressive ones more interesting. But now days I want more fish like Maeve, and my little eartheater reminds me of her. So I want to get some more eartheaters, but I'm stymied by the huge variety of species, some of them incredibly beautiful. Until I came looking here I really had no idea there were so many species. I downloaded 30 or 40 images from this site which cycle through on my PC's desktop background while at work, contributing to my growing mania.
I know that my eartheater will need a larger tank, he or she is about 3 inches now, and starting to grow pretty fast. I have room for maybe a 55 gallon at the moment, after we finish some renovation work I will be able to get a larger tank. I have a good LFS which has several species of eartheaters and can get basically anything I want within reason. I'd like to get some help from the experts here, if possible, in narrowing down which ones to get. They seem to range from small to huge, from easy to care for to less easy, and from docile to moderately territorial. I was wondering if someone here could list some of the more widely available species here on this thread, along with a rough estimate of their maximum size, level of aggression, unusual diet needs, and any other special requirements or unusual environmental characteristics.
For example for Central American cichlids I might say
Convict 4" (males) moderately territorial, hardy, non piscivorous
Citrinellum 10" (males) very territorial, hardy, omnivorous but not highly piscivorous
Managuensis 14" (males) territorial, hardy, piscivorous
etc.
Is that a reasonable request? Or should I go read a FAQ somewhere?
J
I'm a 'recovering fish nut' who once worked in a LFS way back in my youth, (is this how a lot of people become fish addicts?) I have had cichlid tanks almost continuously since that time, back around 1990, so about 25 years. At the peak of my "insanity" I had a big collection, though pitiful by the standards of some of the amazing setups I've seen on here. I had a large heated outdoor pond with numerous Central and South American cichlids, arowana, clown knife etc., plus four large-"ish" tanks, one outdoor on the porch and 3 indoor, and 3 or 4 smaller tanks used for hospitals, raising fry etc. Needless to say all this was trying the patience of my wife! I was breeding managuans and I also wrote a few articles for aquarium trade magazines, which I made a little money on to help defray the costs of all this (at least in theory - hahaha). It all required a huge amount of energy to maintain, not least due to the need of continued management of all the aggressive cichlids as growth-spurts and personality changes suddenly shifted the delicate balance of power in each little 'arena', though I was pretty good keeping that balance. I had the 'fever' but I also thought I had some kind of gift at keeping the damn things thriving and preventing them from killing one another, I thought in my hubris that I knew everything about cichlids. It lasted until hurricane Katrina at the end of 2005.
Miraculously, some of the fish survived the storm, one tank, a 75 gallon in my front room, had a large male managuan and about 10 silver dollars in it. All other fish had been devoured by the managuan but he couldn't catch the silver dollars. The floodwater in the house had been up to within an inch of the top of the tank, but the fish somehow had survived a month of no power and no circulation in the stifling heat. How, I have no idea. I was busy one day with the dreary task of removing intact belongings from the house (it's amazing how many things in your house are above four feet high) and while the tank, like everything else, was covered in flood-muck, I kept seeing these flashes which I finally realized were the silver dollars dodging yet another lunge from the Mag. In spite of the extreme difficulties involved at that time, I managed to rescue these creatures and keep them alive though the various events of that year.
Eventually I got a bit more challenging job which took up much more of my time. We moved several times and after some traveling around ended up back in New Orleans in another part of town (an area on higher ground which never flooded). I wanted to keep my little friend the managuan, who was named Pablo Escobar, but it was challenging as he had outgrown my only remaining large-ish tank, the 75 gal I'd recovered from my old place, and due to the need to rebuild our life and so on, I couldn't afford to buy a big new tank. I put the mag and the silver dollars in an outdoor pond, an above-ground wooden framed pond. Meanwhile I stocked the 75 with some peacock cichlids and a few synuspillum catfish.
But it seemed like I'd lost my knack. After about a year some unknown creatures devoured the fish in the pond (and destroyed a big power-filter), I'm pretty sure it was raccoons but I'm not sure, it could have been large water birds or a particularly bold cat, Pablo was pretty aggressive but who knows. Then the nice looking half-grown peacocks started dying in my 75 gal for unknown reasons, and another 55 gal tank I was maintaining in an office turned green and I couldn't seem to fix that either. I thought I knew everything about fish tanks but it was starting to dawn on me that I actually had a lot to learn. I started selling and giving away my tanks and was down to a single 40 gal cube which is in my little office, with a few community fish in it.
Even that tank wasn't doing well. Fish kept dying, and my wife would make wry comments. I was at a loss. I finally figured out the water quality in the tank had declined a lot and the Nitrates had gotten to apparently dangerous levels. I think in the old days I had just messed around with the tanks so much, moved everything around and inevitably, emptied and refilled the tanks so often, that I'd never had a problem with Nitrates in the past. Also with a less fast -paced lifestyle and more of my life spent at work (and sometimes out of state on job-sites for weeks on end), I think subjective time was just passing more quickly for me as it does when you reach middle age, and I no longer paid enough attention to the tank.
About six months ago I finally got the tank working properly again with some systematic water changes. I even got some plants growing in it. Nothing to brag about by any means, but the tank has transitioned, it ceased to be a minor chore and a depressing reminder of failure, and for the first time in years, it started to be fun again.
That is what brought me here. Now that I've turned over my new leaf, and trying to be realistic about what I can actually handle in terms of time and investment. The tank I have has a few community fish, the star of which is an eartheater cichlid of some kind. I think it's a brasiliensis but I'm not certain. I came back to this site, which I hadn't seen in years, trying to figure out what kind of fish he (or she) was. I learned here of the bewildering variety of these interesting creatures. In my mad youth I only appreciated the most violent, territorial and aggressive fish due to my youthful insanity. How I envied my friend who had turned his swimming pool into a pond for ferocious umbee's and dovii. But now I'm well aware of my own limitations, and I have no interest in trying to cope with an umbee unless I win the lottery. I remember my very favorite fish from the peak of my madness, was a quite mellow Green Terror we called 'Maeve', who caused very little trouble aside from disagreeing with my wife over how the tank should be decorated. I really don't want to see fish fight or to manage aggression, I really never did, I just found the aggressive ones more interesting. But now days I want more fish like Maeve, and my little eartheater reminds me of her. So I want to get some more eartheaters, but I'm stymied by the huge variety of species, some of them incredibly beautiful. Until I came looking here I really had no idea there were so many species. I downloaded 30 or 40 images from this site which cycle through on my PC's desktop background while at work, contributing to my growing mania.
I know that my eartheater will need a larger tank, he or she is about 3 inches now, and starting to grow pretty fast. I have room for maybe a 55 gallon at the moment, after we finish some renovation work I will be able to get a larger tank. I have a good LFS which has several species of eartheaters and can get basically anything I want within reason. I'd like to get some help from the experts here, if possible, in narrowing down which ones to get. They seem to range from small to huge, from easy to care for to less easy, and from docile to moderately territorial. I was wondering if someone here could list some of the more widely available species here on this thread, along with a rough estimate of their maximum size, level of aggression, unusual diet needs, and any other special requirements or unusual environmental characteristics.
For example for Central American cichlids I might say
Convict 4" (males) moderately territorial, hardy, non piscivorous
Citrinellum 10" (males) very territorial, hardy, omnivorous but not highly piscivorous
Managuensis 14" (males) territorial, hardy, piscivorous
etc.
Is that a reasonable request? Or should I go read a FAQ somewhere?
J
welcome to the site 
