Is it safe to keep rams with chocolate cichlid or are they too small ?

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Might work, but I wouldn't advise being me right now. I thought I could have rams and kribs together in a 75. Maybe I could with more money and separate quarantine and hospital tanks, but 4 rams and 3 kribs and a couple danios and sword tails later the fish police may be right, a 75 for a single krib and a few small dithers.
Or it's always a gamble and some chocolates take more kindly to rams than others. The wrong Chocolate would likely find the right Ram in the whole Amazon and kill it.
Might and likely will work, just maybe don't if losing rams would bum you out and/or set you back. I'm currently pretty bummed out and set back.
 
GolemGolem said:
Might work, but I wouldn't advise being me right now. I thought I could have rams and kribs together in a 75. Maybe I could with more money and separate quarantine and hospital tanks, but 4 rams and 3 kribs and a couple danios and sword tails later the fish police may be right, a 75 for a single krib and a few small dithers.
Or it's always a gamble and some chocolates take more kindly to rams than others. The wrong Chocolate would likely find the right Ram in the whole Amazon and kill it.
Might and likely will work, just maybe don't if losing rams would bum you out and/or set you back. I'm currently pretty bummed out and set back.
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Should never keep african fishes with sa fishes. The issue is that they don't know how to talk to each other so 'threat signals' get misinterpreted and result in more real conflicts; and kribs are 'mean'.
 
jake37 said:
Should never keep african fishes with sa fishes. The issue is that they don't know how to talk to each other so 'threat signals' get misinterpreted and result in more real conflicts; and kribs are 'mean'.
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Krebs aren't that mean in my opinion and they can be kept with rams, because they come from water with similar water parameters.

Personally, I've mixed more aggressive Africans like peacocks and mbuna with Central Americans and they're doing fine. I've always been more worried about the aggression between the African cichlids than their aggression to the Central Americans. As such, aggression won't be an issue in a krib+ram set up.

edit: I also wrote a research paper that showed that African cichlids show more aggression to each other than to American cichlids.
 
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If I were to purchase a group of 4 2 inch chocolate cichlid today; what size would they be in one year ? My 120 is moderately stocked and it will be approx 1 year (10 to 11 months) before I could move them to a 400. The 120 has some clown loaches, 2 angels and cherry barbs along with an assortment of plecos.
 
I would wait until you have the 400g that stocking would be stuffed. My Choco is over 7in and eats guppies. I wouldn't try blue or gold rams but Bolivian rams might work.
 
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Or get Biotodoma which look like giant Bolivian rams.

My temporalis were pretty passive but I never kept them with any cichlids as small as rams. I did keep sub-adult chocolates with Laetacara dorsigera and Laetacara thayeri which were similarly-sized to rams but also more pugnacious.

Hypselecara coryphaenoides, on the other hand, have been very aggressive for me, attacking lots of my other large cichlids and trying to stealthily obliterate anything smaller than 4” or so. This includes Ancistrus.

I’d say as with most cichlids, you have more luck finding placid individuals among commercially-bred fish than wild-caught ones. The closer to wild-caught they are, the more they tend to exhibit those behaviors, including opportunistic feeding on tankmates.
 
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jake37 said:
If I were to purchase a group of 4 2 inch chocolate cichlid today; what size would they be in one year ? My 120 is moderately stocked and it will be approx 1 year (10 to 11 months) before I could move them to a 400. The 120 has some clown loaches, 2 angels and cherry barbs along with an assortment of plecos.
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If they are pigs like mine was, about 0.5"-1" every month until roughly 6". So about 8-10" in about a year.
 
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After viewing esoxlucius esoxlucius awsome Chocolate Cichlid, I bought two of them for my 120 gal. Current tankmates include Filamentosa Barbs, Denison Barbs, Columbian & Diamond Tetras as well as varieties of Botia Loach.
My largest Chocolate is six inches, the other one is four inches.
My Chocolates spend most of the time near the top or mid level of the tank, heads angled upward apparently waiting for grasshoppers or pellets. They pay very little attention to the tankmates & have no aggression towards each other.
I've had the Chocolates for about six months & can't positively attribute any tankmate deaths to them. During that time two smaller Denison Barbs mysteriously died, but were not consumed. The Chocolates might have killed them.
If plenty of hardscape is provided for the Rams, chances are a long term cohabitation between the Rams & Chocolate is possible.
 
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