Aggression scale for south American cichlids.

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I've always found dempsy's to be pretty passive fish (in my experience), and rank them around a 5!.. However, in a tank that small, your defiantly gonna struggle to stock any number of "mean ass fish" IF your talking about American cichlids tank mates? Ps: a large male dovii ranks as an 11 so don't go there!.. Stick to the average tank mates like Severums and fire mouth's.
good luck...
 
Sals are mean colorful smaller fish. Also look into Nics, HRPs and Texas.

If I were you I'd stick to CA cichlids as for the most part SA are more docile.
 
Even though there is individual difference, JD falls within the passive range for aggressiveness. One commonly reported problem with JD is that they can be shy and skittish, and need tankmates to calm them down. Their aggresiveness also changes with age. I found juvenile and subadult JDs more aggressive than old JDs which tend to mellow down to being withdrawn.
 
Aqualoon said:
Sals are mean colorful smaller fish. Also look into Nics, HRPs and Texas.

If I were you I'd stick to CA cichlids as for the most part SA are more docile.
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I learned that lesson a few days ago when my male Sal went berserk one night and woke up to find my female Sal pretty much dead and died within a couple of hours of finding her. It happened during the night and was sudden.
 
Jack Dempsey are probally about a 6 it really depends on the indivual..i had two jd's in a 45 long and one was ver aggreesive and the other was like a gold fish...I've seen ver aggressive one' that go up against arowanas,snakeheads, and pbases online. in my lfs there is a 450g as soon as you walk in and there is 3 jack dempse's about 8" arowana, RTC, pbass x2 and some weird catfish..but the guy tells me the jd's are th alpha and i've seen how they tret the other fish in the tank.
 
AllAlaskan said:
I learned that lesson a few days ago when my male Sal went berserk one night and woke up to find my female Sal pretty much dead and died within a couple of hours of finding her. It happened during the night and was sudden.
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I had a CA community a few years back and the male sal I had in the tank was a terror, replaced him with a female sal and everything was great. The female had really intense colors too, ever since then I had wanted to get a tank setup just for a breeding pair but just haven't yet.
 
Judging a fish for aggression is like playing Russian Roulette. Like others have said it goes by individual fish. For example I have a Firemouth that nearly killed a 8" green tiger pike cichlid, it battles with my Cuban cichlid and my Texas all the time and 99% of the time the other fish back down.

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from personal experience:
10 - umbi, dovii, trimac
9- midas,grammodes, flower horn
8- jaguar,
7- neets, salvini
6- texas,
5-jd, convict
4- firemouth, oscar
3- severum,
2- angel fish
1 ram, keyholes


If most of the above spawn then you could +2 to the ranking. Predicting cichlid behavour is difficult, all fish seem to behave differently, some known agressive species can be docile. with increasing size and mass the damage the fish does increases also some fish have very sharp teeth others do not,
 
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Keep in mind Oscars are only 'aggressive' because they think any tank mate that's smaller then them is food and usually attempts to fit them in their mouth.
 
Where would buttikofferi,red devil,green terror, and true red festae land on the aggression list? Just wondering. Thanks in advance.


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