starting chiclid tank need some help

[killzmke]

hey guys, i usually keep piranhas but my girl wants her own community tank and likes how chiclids look. so i will be donating a 55 to her project. she for sure wants 2 yellow labs, what else should we put in there to start? i need something that wont over crowd the tank for atleast 3 months (then i can afford to tell her "you need a bigger tank" and get her one). oh, and remember, she likes "pretty" fish. thanks for any input.


-joel

 

[Addikted2Cichlids]

Maybe some Demasoni, Kenyi, peacocks, or something along those lines.. Depending on how long you want to wait to upgrade you could even get some really small fronts. They grow rather slow but you would def have to upgrade..

 

[killzmke]

Maybe some Demasoni, Kenyi, peacocks, or something along those lines.. Depending on how long you want to wait to upgrade you could even get some really small fronts. They grow rather slow but you would def have to upgrade..

thats okay, its part of my plan to get a bigger tank... get a 180 or bigger for my rhom and give her my 125 cause she needs more room. thanks for the suggestions ill check those out.

 

[shellies215]

I would stay away from kenyi in a 55. Yellow labs and demasoni are a classic combo, as long as the dems are a large group(12+) to spread out aggression.
An all male peacock tank is another option, but nice looking males can get expensive pretty quickly.

 

[killzmke]

yeah they want 40 ea. for em at my lfs(male peacocks)

 

[love The Jack Dempseys]

try some jewel cichlids.

 

[Ash]

I would stay away from kenyi in a 55. Yellow labs and demasoni are a classic combo, as long as the dems are a large group(12+) to spread out aggression.
An all male peacock tank is another option, but nice looking males can get expensive pretty quickly.

^This

If she likes pretty all male peacocks would be a good one and make a great show tank. Buy them small instead and order them from the interwebs or post up and see if there is a local breeder on here or someone here may know, its a lot cheaper that way. That would be my suggestion.

As for the fronts someone suggested, I am personally going to advise against it if you go with an mbuna tank, mbuna are agressive and can easily stress out frontosa which are already skiddish fish and more peaceful than mbuna are. I know people have done it but very rare have a seen it done with a front that does not look really dark and stressed out.