Killer Cichlids
 

not auto related

My pleco snape was killed by my convict cichlids...... I was handling my sisters dwarf hamster and then noticed snape.. He was upside down on the bottom of the tank.I was upset he had died but then I saw him twitch and I saw that something ripped his eyes out... The cichlids must have attacked him because he was cleaning the rocks too close to their eggs..

Sadly he died and I had to give him the big flush.. The cichlids will be getting th flush soon or what ever to get rid of them since no one I know wants them... Stupid cichlids.. he didn't do anything.. he never ate the fry...

sad day. Snape was my favorite.. He grew at least an inch since I bought him.. Now my tank is full of killers and I want them gone.. I'm probably going to sell the tank also.. I have no desire now to put effort and restock it

Sorry to hear that
 

Don, sorry to hear about the pleco. I am having an issue with some now gigantic tin foil barbs. They are probably 8-9" now. They just killed off a few smaller tetras in the tank. They hadn't been bothering the smaller fish in the past. They must be getting hungry. I usually dump about 25-30 microwaved peas in the tank along with the flake food to increase their food volume. I know the cichlids can be tough. Usually plecos can handle them. A local fish store has a 16" pacu with a large pleco in there and they co-exist.

On a similar note, my pleco in the same tank just suddenly died. I had it for 7+ years, It grew from less than an inch to about 11" long. I'm trying to attach a picture of him, he is spanning the 12" width of a 55 gal tank. Sad to see them go.

I saw a (not so) funny line in a fish forum the other day..." If one fish can fit in another fish's mouth, it probably will".

Chuck

I have found that Oscars and Jack Dempsey's leave the plecos alone. You wouldnt want to be a goldfish though.:eek:

If no one buys my tanks I just might make it an oscar tank... Stick an oscar in there and a pleco as well

My wife's cichlids have been pecking at the pleco's fins, we have 2 large pleco's and several big fat orange cichlids and they have historically gotten along...now, if we could get the 2 male Boston Terriers to stop trying to kill each other we'd be all set. I have had American Bulldogs and Neapolitan Mastiffs that were less inclined to attack each other than these little guys, they are ferocious.

Snape wasn't even fully dead when I removed him from the tank.. he kept swimming away from me and then he would give up and float to the top of the tank... There was no hope.. I had to give him the big flush

Tomorrow I'm going down to my local fish store to see if the guy will take my cichlids since flushing them would be wrong in a sense

You can't mix Cichlids with just ANY type of fish. If it's a Cichlid set-up, than it's supposed to be pretty much ALL Cichlids. I figured you probably Knew that ahead of time, but I thought I'd throw that out there...

Love and Kisses;;;;;Trucky

the thing is..

the cichlids are peaceful when they do not have eggs or fry around.. other than they they lived fine for the last 5 months...

my pleco minded his own business and would only clean at night while the cichlids were not active. During the day he would hang out under the filter and rest

I used to be quite a fish tank man.

The first time I got oscars I didn't realize they were so aggressive. I put them in a tank with about 20 other fish. Fish kept turning up dead and I kept flushing suspicious looking other fish until about half my fish were dead either at the teeth of the little oscars or in the maw of my wc.

Finally I realized the oscars were guilty and traded them back to the fish store for something that ate plants.

Years later I bought just two and raised them til they were as big as my hand or so. One was bigger than the other and soon was biting it all the time. I eventually had to put the aggressive one in solitary.

When we moved to a different home in the cold of winter the oscars stopped eating and soon died.

Now I have children, grand children and a largish bunny. My Mrs. has a smallish finch type bird.....and a half dozen or so very very hardy plants.;)

Tom W

Interesting.., Typically they wouldn't have even gotten along even this well, for this long, from my experience anyways. The Cichlids would usually have bullied everyone else around and they would have definately kicked everyone's else' arse by now.


Truckaroony

from what I've read thats only when they are with fry... when I would stick an algae disc for the pleco in the tank they would nip at it .. but would leave when snape would go for it..

I used to have snape eat from my hand.. good times

My big oscars would take 1/2" square hunks of raw beef liver from my fingers. They would leap half way out of the tank too like mini dolphins!

Tom W

Yeah, I made the mistake with a Jack Dempsey. Mean 'ol sucker! Had to give him away.

Just get a couple red devils to teach them convicts a lesson.

bologna
 

There was a fish tank in high school biology with some oscars. We discovered they liked bologna more than we did. Daily feedings caused them to grow pretty rapidly. They got very aggresive around their food!