Acarichthys heckelii grow out

[dogofwar]

I've had groups of them co-exist with each other and other, peaceful fish like Keyholes and Buffaloheads for years...then all of a sudden a male will off a female or two...like overnight.

I've hear that they'll breed in a flowerpot with the open side down and a hole knocked in the base...any experiences?

I currently have 5 wild ones growing out at well.

 

[japes]

They're purely aggressive to conspecifics, I have never seen them even look twice at anything other than Tetra, which they're quite predatory towards.

With that said I had trouble keeping my 4 at 5-7" in a 4x2 footprint, but they're apparently doing well in their new 8x2x2 at QueenslandeRs. I think you either need a really good group of fish that don't mind eachothers company, whether this is found by chance with mild specimens, or by sex ratios and overall numbers I'm not sure - or the room for them to get away from trouble if need be.

In my 4x2x2 I had a couple courting, even though they weren't yet what is considered the breeding age of wild A. heckelii at the 2-3 year mark, beating up the remaining two who were stuck trying to hide in the dark top corners of the tank.

 

[peathenster]

I've had groups of them co-exist with each other and other, peaceful fish like Keyholes and Buffaloheads for years...then all of a sudden a male will off a female or two...like overnight.

I've hear that they'll breed in a flowerpot with the open side down and a hole knocked in the base...any experiences?

I currently have 5 wild ones growing out at well.

I was quite happy after reading the first half of your first sentence....oh well

They are supposed to be diggers + cave spawners, so the flower pot thing makes sense...

They are quite mean towards each other as adults. I had a group of seven adults that insisted on beating the tar out of each other but no one else in the tank, such as my rotkeils. Smallest Hecklii was about 7" and biggest was over 9".

Stunning fish Chaitka! Is that normal or breeding color?

They seem to be pretty quite rough on other heckelii and mine loved to nipe my other geo's as well. Don't plan on having a lot of trailers on your other geo's if you combine them. They don't seem to pay any attention to other non geo's though. I wouldn't consider them anything close to a brasilinesis or red bahia though. Those guys would murder a heckelii with ease. I keep a red bahia with my Esondido pair to clean up after them and he holds his own.

My Geos are just starting to grow trailers