Newly Aquired ...

[ryansmith83]

My females were always smaller and a bit more short-bodied. The males tend to be more long with a taller, more squared forehead. Based on the body shape in the pictures, they both appear to be males to me. You could go get two or three small rainbows as long as your tank is adequately sized. I kept mine in groups and it helped take the aggression off of a single submissive fish.

And yes, they are notorious snail eaters. At 1" my group of rainbows wiped out about 12 of my nerite snails. I had no idea they'd eat them, especially at such a small size. Lesson learned!

 

[JML1997]

Thats nice, the odessas will work as dithers.......how big are they anyways? Yea snails aren't the best mix with cichlids.. I once had a 4-5" red devil attack, and eat one of my golden apple snails.

 

[smitty03281964]

They do look like rainbow cichlids a very nice fish.

 

[Crunchy]

The rainbows are about 2.5 to 3 inches long, the odessas are around 3/4 to 1 inch and the OB is about 1.5 to 2 inches. All reside in my 55 gallon that has 780gph filtration running. I just removed the snails (they were not happy in there) and am about to add 4 clown loaches for the bottom feeders. I will be looking around for about 2 more smaller Rainbows to help with the aggression, but they are hard to come by in my area. Any suggestions for something else if I can't find Rainbows?

 

[cichlidfish]

Nice buy and good luck w/ the pair.

 

[Crunchy]

Update: They both do appear to be males. They have claimed opposite sides of the tank now and have lots of character. The gray one keeps trying to change his colors (he's gotten pretty far quite a few times) then the other (dominant one) rushes over to force him back to gray.

Since I've added rocks and a few hiding places, all the fish ignore the center of the tank and mostly stick to one end or the other. Maybe I need to rearrange them a bit better.

I'll get new pics up as soon as I get my hands on some new Lithium-ion batteries.

 

[Calihawk]

The yellow one is for sure a rainbow Cichlid, and a nice one at that....as for the other one, I have no idea, but it doesn't look like a rainbow Cichlid to me.

+1 , For sure dude, that darker one looks like a hybrid perhaps.

 

[Crunchy]

Nah, at this point I'm certain they are both rainbow cichlids. The darker one has tried to show his colors a few times now, but gets chased by the yellow one and reverts back to gray. He manages to reach the coloring of the dominant one every now and then but usually gets to the point that I call Cheetos coloring. Looks like someone dropped him in a bag of Cheetos (gray under a orange/yellow tinge).