OK Tankmates?

[BDawg364]

Ok, so I have had a 29 gallon tank for 6 months and it had a black piranha and a tiger oscar (RIP) and they got along better because they grew up together. I recently got a new 29 gallon tank, and I have 5 juvenile convicts, a juvenile oscar, and I'm getting 3 jevenile green terrors on friday. Do you think they will kill each other, or grow up happy? (I have added the third green terror and the fourth and fifth convicts in case of loss) Please let me know what you think.

 

[piranha45]

a single green terror cannot live in a 29g for life. The fish is too big. 55g minimum. They get 9"-11"

A single oscar cannot live in a 29g for life. The fish is too big. 75g minimum. They get over a foot long, you know.



Cichlids are not the type of fish that you heavily stock together; they are not tetras/barbs/goldfish/guppies/danios/etc. Your little guys might look cute now but in 3 months they'll all have grown by another 3".

They are large and generally predatory fish that emit huge quantities of waste. They require very large tanks to keep properly.


I hope I put things into perspective for you.




For the kind of setup you are talking about, you'd need a 180 gallon tank, bare minimum.

 

[loach43]

Well said

In the cichlid world you'll need to downsize or else you'll just wind up with more dead fish. I've kept 4-6 cichlids in 29g tanks like Julidochromis marleri, transcriptus etc. and lamprologus brichardi. Nothing that grows over 4-5 inches. Wise to keep it that way instead of getting fish that max out at 8"-12".

 

[Fry]

Yes, your tanks are too small for your fish. Only the convicts are ok in there and there are too many of them. One breeding pair per 29G, breeding convicts get very nasty and will kill everything else in the tank, and they breed very easily. Either that or keep all males in one, and all females in one. It's not a good idea to keep a single oscar or gt in anything smaller than a 50 Gallon (18" wide) tank, they will at least have some comfort to turn around when they get to full size. In a 75 Gallon you can have 2 Oscars or GT (minimum specified for 2 at www.oscarfish.com). You can keep a bunch of Cichlids together through a technique called "controlled overcrowding" where there are so many fish their aggression is dispersed and there are no real fight to the deaths, only problem with that and large Cichlids is the waste accumulation which means you'll need aloooooooot of filtration. However that doesn't mean keeping fish in a tank where they can barely turn around. Hope this helps you.

Of course we are all talking about nothing if you have plans to move them to bigger tanks as they age. If you will have them in better homes before long, sorry for hassling you.