Keeping Cichlids - Page 2

cmahan4576 · 05-05-2012, 08:34 PM

i can't tell the difference between male and female

**Obsidian** · 05-05-2012, 11:34 PM

There are going to be some differences in how to sex specific cichlids. However a place to start is by their dorsal fin. Males tend to be more pointed, and females more rounded. This will not be true for all cichlids, but I do believe it is true for many. There are stripe differences as well. Look up the fish you have at a site like the Cichlid Forum- they have pictures of males, females and juveniles of a ton of different Cichlids.

The rounded fin should be fairly obvious. When I finally saw the difference in a females I was all "oh duh, that's easy to see." Juvies are hard because they are not grown up yet so they do not look like they "should" as adults.

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/index.php

Ladayen · 05-06-2012, 12:15 AM

Erm.. thats for live bearers like guppies Obsidian not for cichlids, at least I've never seen it before.

Erm Ioha.. really 6 peacocks in a 16g tank? I have 7 oto's in a 20 and it's looking full lol. There simply will not be any room at all for them to swim especially with proper rocks/caves. At even 4" per fish thats going to be 2' of fish. The tank is only going to be... 12" long maybe. So if you stack them on top of each other thats 2 rows so that about takes care of the height of the tank... meaning the fish only have the 10" of width to swim with. Now of course many peacocks are open water predators.. very active. I dont think they will be happy with this at all.

They're cichlids that will work in a 16g, any malawi cichlid is not one of them however.

**emc7** · 05-06-2012, 01:22 AM

obs is correct for kribs, rams, convicts, jewels, many other biparental substrate spawning cichlids and often males will be larger. It is far more subtle than in livebearers. Look at the anal and the dorsal fins. Female Malawi cichlids may have a more rounded anal fin, fewer eggspots or be slightly smaller. But in many species females look nearly the same as males until the males change color with maturity, and even then many non-dominant males may look like females. In some tangs, size may be the only clue (i.e. julie females are larger, multi males are much larger) or mature males may have more of a metallic sheen.

In a small tank, you really need to keep up water changes or Malawian will stop growing (but not stop getting aggressive). I tend to recommend tank sizes based on a fish's life even though that isn't how I do it. I am always moving fry to larger and larger tanks as they grow. And I keep single Malawians in 5 gallon hospital tanks for short times. Most new people have only one tank and plans for more often fall through. If you get a fish that will outgrow your tank, have a plan for what to do with it.

For a 16, I wouldn't get any Malawi fish for long term. Maybe the shell-dwelling psuedotropheus livingstoni, but probably not.

I say get a pair of Hemichromis Christatus. The smallest, mildest, and most brightly colored of all the jewelfish. Then the issue isn't the fish's size, but the number of fish. You could keep your LFS supplied.

Where are you located?

Ladayen · 05-06-2012, 09:53 AM

hmm really.. I'm going to have a look at my jewel lol.

cmahan4576 · 05-14-2012, 05:53 PM

i'm really confused! Should i get them or not?????? Should i get a bigger tank????????? If i shouldn't keep them then what fish would be good??????? i already have some fish. I have four goldfish 2 orandas one calico and one shubukin and a fidler crab! They are pretty nice. i would rather get another tank then replace my other fish. But i have no space. we might put a new room on our house so mabey i can a bigger tank in there???????????????????????????????????????????