African buffalo head cichlids

[Magnum Man68 183]

“regular” ( Steatocranus casuarius )
“slender ( Steatocranus tinanti )

anyone with tank experience for either???

 

[GaryE28 26]

I love Steatocranus, and have kept those two and half a dozen others. They are rapids fish with reduced swim bladders - an adaptation to keep them from being swept out of their territories. They hate all other fish, but because they suck at swimming, they have never harmed tankmates here.

They are solidly grey, but are really interesting fish to keep if you have a high flow tank with rockwork galore. They do hide a lot, but come out enough to be entertaining.

 

[GaryE28 26]

I don't have any pictures of either here. I'll attach a photo of a tank I bred Steatocranus gibbiceps in, and a photo of an undescribed species that is very close to tinanti - not different in a way my bad photos show. My unscientific comment is that their eyes are fantastic and almost expressive, and you can very easily makes pets of them. They're a 'character fish' group -all the species in the Genus are great. As a friend once said. they look like muppets.

They appear to be very badly constructed fish til you look into their habitat, and realize how brilliantly their bodies respond to it.

Unfortunately, the period when I saw or kept a lot of these fish was before the price of digital cameras had come down low enough for bad photographers like me. I love tinanti and casuarius, and... do it!

 

[Rusty_Shackleford67 183]

I kept Buffalo heads years ago. As Gary said they are an awesome fish. I would think they would they would like a similar set up as your garras, I'm not sure if they would cohabitat peacefully.