So it's been a while and lots to update so a long post here we come.....
I thought I'd update you with my trials and tribulations, successes and failures.
I went with cichlids as planned. Started off with juvenile Jack Dempsey (female), Firemouth, Electric Blue Acara, and a Caqueta Gold Eartheater. I also impulse purchased a beautiful Gold Nugget pleco which was probably my biggest mistake really, as it was the only fish that I did little to no research on (more on that later).
Things went well for the first few weeks but then I noticed the Firemouth stopped eating, I had another small tank available, so set it up the following morning and went to remove the Firemouth but sadly found him dead before I could move him. A few days later I noticed the EBA also stopped eating and I still had the hospital tank setup, so I removed him immediately. Sadly the next morning I came down to find him dead. I was checking the water parameters regularly and always had zero ammonia and zero nitrites and c20ppm nitrates, largely due to high nitrates in tap water (more on that later), and no obvious signs of illness / parasites, so I was at a bit of a loss.
Now I was down to just the eartheater and the dempsey, plus the pleco. I regularly observed for the next few days and saw that the dempsey was chasing the much larger eartheater, a lot. I did some extra research online and found many saying that the Firemouth and EBA can quite easily succumb to stress and die. At this point I was looking for some new fish anyway but now decided not to replace like for like, given the possible link of stress related death from the dempsey aggression.
LFS suggested I could try something with more biff, to pair with the dempsey and see if that settled her down / developed a hierarchy and, if not, then I could swap her. I went for a male Green Terror (Gold Saum), which I'd always been in love with but had avoided as was originally aiming for Central American cichlids. I added the GT to acclimate in the bag and the noticed the Dempsey immediately charging the bag. When I released the GT, the dempsey started chasing him and there was some lip locking. It seemed to settle down after half an hour but then a couple of hours later it all kicked off again, it was very full on aggression, no one backing down! I decided to remove the dempsey from the tank this time and the tank was immediately like a different, much calmer, place. I took her back to the LFS and replaced her with another female dempsey. This was about six weeks ago and things have gone reasonably well with her so far. So it looks like I just got a psycho killer dempsey the first time around!
Since then there has been some balance in the tank but sadly, soon after replacing the dempsey, I found the Gold Nugget dead in the tank. It seemed like it came out of nowhere, I was really sad because I thought she was doing well. Jury is out if the eartheater went for her ( she was found near "his" cave at the time) or if the harder water parameters did it, which seems more likely to me. I recently replaced her with a super red bristlenose pleco, which hopefully will be a bit more robust (although he's more orange than red!).
Equipment wise, the Aquael tank, filter and inline heater have been faultless, I added a power head for some flow but nothing else changed. Decor wise, I stuck with fake plants, removed a lot of the rock and added larger driftwood pieces and some guttering as little hideouts (the eartheater loves hiding in the guttering). All this has made it easier to clean, easier to break up territories with each water change and the tall wood gave good line of site breaks to help stop any chases before they get out of hand (I have a tank divider if they do go on a bit too long, which is rare now).
One thing I should also add, I went for a RODI unit in the end and it is excellent. I use 3 parts RODI to 1 part tap and that lands at about 7.2ph, 60-80kh (don't have a liquid test kit yet, have one on order) and 60-120gh. This was vs 7.8 / 240+ / 180+ straight from the tap, also with 40ppm nitrates! Much cleaner and clearer tank now, less algae and fish seem a bit brighter as well.
So (for now) things are great, it's been a steep learning curve and sad to lose those fish early on but I'm loving the whole experience.
Long text update over! And now some pictures:
GT:
JD:
Super red bristlenose pleco:
Caqueta Gold Eartheater (so beautiful and I really enjoy watching all the excavations!):
New tank layout. The custom perspex divider I got from eBay and use only occasionally if I need to put someone in time out. Saves moving them to another tank. Works really well.
Thanks for reading!
www.tropicalfishsite.com
cichlidguide.com
fishinaquarium.com
