remembering again, why I gave up ( for the most part ) on South American cichlids...

[GaryE]

When I bred angels, I once had a big bag of young ready to go to the club.
I walked out with the bag and discovered my car had been stolen. That's a fish that will go to great lengths to stay in your tanks.

 

[Magnum Man]

not done obviously, but a start... big momma on the left end, the most likely male ( if any ) of the 2 new fish in the center, and the 3rd fish on the right side... curious if the center fish ends up male, and the one on the other end female, if I could end up with a breeding trio, with the tank set up like this???

foam on the bottom and top friction fit the dividers in place, and they were not quite tall enough, with so little substrate

 

[Magnum Man]

I moved the larger worm line pleco to the tetra tank... and it seems to be leaving the couple cory's alone in that tank... and should do well in there... it's an aggressive eater of algae cookies, so I'll need to double the cookies I'm feeding in that tank now...

big momma has been moving even the bigger rocks out of the way, and swimming under the dividers, so all 3 fish are swimming under them right now, and she seems to want to be in the section the other 2 are in, so she can chase them around... but at least the other 2 aren't fighting, when they are running away... and so far, it's just been mean mugging, not even a damaged fin on any of the fish...

it's pretty noisy, when big momma is pushing around the 2-3 inch stones...

 

[GaryE]

"Divider breeding" is an old trick with large aggressive Cichlids in small, violence inspiring tanks. It's used for the mass production of fry. Ever wonder why fish like dempsies can be so cheap?

It's a technique I've never used because I've never been into mass production for markets. As a hobbyist, I find those tanks uninteresting to look at. And the kinds of fish it works with can be very hard to sell. It's depressing to raise beautiful Rubricatochromis or Central American Cichlids and have everyone run away screaming when you try to find them homes.

 

[Magnum Man]

in the state it's in ( the tank), it's too "commercial" looking for me... so the 1st task, is to get the tank so they can't just go anywhere they want, then to do what I can to make it look more like an aquarium, than a zoo cage...

but then any of the larger cichlids can be challenging to keep the tank how you want it to look... big momma being a mid size cichlid, is moving 3 inch rocks, back when I had oscar's ( in the dark ages ) they always rearranged the tank, how they wanted the tank to look, even moving 5-6 inch rocks, no live plants, only heavily weighted plastic plants, and more often than not, those were laying on their sides, or buried under substrate...