You may have noticed that there is aggression between the Cichlids in your aquarium, and they may even be exerting it onto the other fish in the tank. Regretfully Cichlids are known for their rather fiery, aggressive behaviour. They are quick to claim their own territory in the tank and have been known to chase other fish to the point of exhaustion.

Have you noticed that some inhabitants of your tank are hiding in the upper areas of the aquarium, and seem to be swimming sideways? Unfortunately this normally indicates that the fish has been forced out of the communal tank by a more dominating and aggressive fish, and feels that it has nowhere left to go. Sadly these fish will die within a short period of time.

How can you save your other fish from this aggressive behavior?

You will need to carefully consider two things to help stop this aggressive Cichlid behaviour. The amount of structure in the aquarium and the female to male ratio.

It is extremely important for Cichlds to have hiding spots and structures. If you have more areas of cover in the tank, there will be more opportunities for the Cichlids to claim their own territory. If there is too little wood and rocky areas in the aquarium, the other fish will become targeted by the dominant Cichlid males. But if you have too much cover your tank can become very difficult to clean and this can lead to disease or toxic levels of waste in the water.

The safest bet would be to closely observe the behavior of your fish while starting with just a few pieces of wood and rock in the aquarium. If you notice the fish competing for a space to dominate, you can then add more pieces of wood and rock to the aquarium.

It is also essential that you have an understanding of the female to male ratio in your tank. Male Cichlids are known for chasing their females relentlessly when they want to mate. If there are not enough female Cichlids in the aquarium, she will be targeted by the male and never get a break. The female Cichlid will become very stressed and exhausted, and in time the male will cause her death.

Too many male Cichlids in the aquarium will also cause them to fight with each other, over the females attention. This is easy to avoid by only keeping one male Cichlid to three females in the tank.

Even a medium sized Cichlid will cost at least $25 each. Therefor it can become a very expensive hobby if you need to keep replacing them. So try to keep aggression amongst your fish in check. On the other hand, with the right knowledge a successful breeding program would likely be very profitable.

With a little know how and effort keeping Cichlids should prove to be an extremely rewarding and enjoyable experience for many years to come.

Tags: Fish

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Fish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.