Cichlids reluctant to eat

[duanes]

I've been collecting Darienheros for a while, in rivers near the Darien, and while they do "OK", I have never thought they quite thrived the way I wanted them to.
Other cichlids in the tank (even those they share the same river with) albeit slightly different less rheophillic habitat)) seem to intimidate them.
The different habitat preferences may be significant
These Darienheros are similar to Geophagines, in temperamnent, compared to the rouggh and tumble, Andinoacara they have been previously housed with.
So I returned most of the more aggressive Andinoacara to the river where they were caught, and when I caught some new Darienheros, instead of cichlids, am using tetras as tank mates in the 180 gal, and the difference is dramatic. (Astyanax, Brycon, and Roeboides)
The tetras are greedy and eat everything tossed in, and it seems the frennzy they create quicklly seeme to inspire the new wild caught Darienheros to immediately feed.
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So far the newly caught Darieenheros seem to be much more comfortable.

 

[FJB]

Interesting. Can’t say I know why, but I guess the boisterousness of the tetras is inspiring the Darienheros in a manner that the former tankmates didn’t. Or, could it be they were intimidated before?

 

[jjohnwm]

I'm always a bit puzzled when I read a

Other cichlids in the tank (even those they share the same river with) albeit slightly different less rheophillic habitat)) seem to intimidate them.

I'm always a bit puzzled when I read this comment, which often seems to surface in discussions like this. The implication seems to be that two or more species that happen to inhabit the same river or lake will therefore be a natural and easy match to keep together in our tanks.

Zebras live on the savannah with lions...sharks and seals live in the same areas of the ocean...wolves and caribou share the tundra...I think you see where I'm going with this.

In each of these cases, along with countless others, we have a predator living in the same place as its prey; well, duh! Where else would predators live? In other instances, we have boisterous, aggressive bullies living alongside timid shrinking violets, and both seem to survive handily...but when kept in captivity, these "natural" pair-ups are disastrous.

How can this possibly be surprising? In nature, the species in question are not confined in a nearly microscopic enclosure where they literally cannot get more than a foot or two away from each other...ever.

We always strive to recreate "natural" conditions, regarding such things as temperature, pH, hardness, current/flow, etc. That's all well and good, but the elephant in the room is tank size. I don't care how big your tank is...it's still a tank, a tiny spoonful compared to the animals' environment in nature. And it's always many hundreds of times more crowded than the natural environment, in terms of fish per gallon.

Expecting two species to get along together in a home aquarium, based upon the fact that they are found in a similar habitat in the wild, simply doesn't make sense. Nature is combat and competition; there's no happy coexistence, no friendly neighbourhoods of assorted animals living in harmony with other species, or in many cases even with their own species. The best you can hope to achieve, through a combination of thoughtful consideration and luck and sufficient space, is indifference, or perhaps evenly matched competitors that manage to co-habitate without killing each other. That's a "happy" community tank.

 

[esoxlucius]

I don't care how big your tank is...it's still a tank, a tiny spoonful compared to the animals' environment in nature.

Nice post John.

I love watching nature documentaries, as do many others on here probably. Ocean ones especially are magnificent, my favourite by far. Watching these creatures in their natural environment is fascinating.

However, there has to come a point where you watch these nature programmes, then casually glance over at your little glass box full of fish and think to yourself......I really am a sad selfish ********!!

Shame on me because after many decades of keeping fish I have only very recently had the maturity about me to start looking at it this way, especially since I plucked my wild caught European perch from their many millions of gallon reservoir environment and shoehorned them into my 360g tank!!

I wager that the vast array of problems that many aquarists encounter during their fish keeping journey can be attributed to tank size alone.

 

[duanes]

What I find morre significant here, is that although both these species come from the same river, both cichlid species are omnivores, (not predator prey,)
bur do prefer separate micro-habitats and flow rates within the same river.
The Andinoacara seem to prefer slower, more sedate flow rates along the banks,
where the Darienheros are found in faster flowing current areas and mid stream.


It seems in the confines of my glass box, the more aggressive Andinoacara have an advantage, even though I try to recreate a rheophillic envoronment,
it does not match the consentrated strength of the moving wall of water in the river does where the Darienheros are normally netted.


The tetras are found throughout all microhabitats, fast fllows, slow flows, etc, and don't exhibit any terrirtorial predilection when it come to feeding, just random grabbing at whatever flows past,

The cichlids however covet their food areas like selfish children, and removing the Andinoacara bullies, has helped the less gangsta-ish Darienheros.

The more cichlid personalities I encounter, the more selective I become about chosing those combinations.
With the Darienheros, it seems non-cichlids are becoming the best option.

 

[neutrino]

I've had similar experiences with some species (or individual fish), a change of tanks or tankmates and their whole behavior changes, sometimes accompanied by a change in color, etc. Sometimes it's an art trying to achieve a compatible community, more so with less common species vs relatively common mixes, like geos (or Satanoperca) and angels, and/or severums, which works for me virtually every time.

...There is the tank space thing, of course, which is not always about fish size alone, there's also behavior and temperament. For example, in the geo family, some smaller species (rheophiles) need larger tanks than their larger cousins, simply due to behavior. In any case, there certainly are mixed communities of fish in the same spot in the wild in some places, well documented in videos by Project Piaba, Below Water, articles by Heiko Bleher, etc. There's that and species you sometimes see traveling together, virtually schooling together, like angels and Mesonauta. I think, too, sometimes it's about the 'habitat' in the tank, whether it simulates an area, like a fallen branch or tangle, where certain species would commonly congregate in the wild.