Convicts right now, as they're very easy to keep.
The fish I have in there at the moment are offspring from two previous pairs I had.
Sadly three turned out light colored; only one turned out to be the deep almost velvet looking black that the big males had been. They're all quite pretty though, and hide from the camera auto-focus.
Still, a couple of the little ones managed to show up in the tank pics.
The tank itself has been one that has been established (though not always with cichlids) for close to 10 years now.
Prior to cichlids, it had black skirt tetras, neons, a male betta who used to school with the neons (I never did figure that guy out), a dwarf pleco, gold barbs, fire gouramis, guppies, glo-fish (the genetically modified zebras), mollies, hatchets, glass cats, and cory cats.
Not all at once of course.
After the last black skirt I had finally died at about 8 years old and with a big tumor on his face, I decided I wanted to try cichlids as I'd never had any before (not even angelfish) and was a tad bored with the "normal" type of community fish, and went with convicts as they seemed to be either the easiest to keep or the hardest to kill depending on how you want to look at it.
They do share the tank with an overlarge chinese algae eater. They tend to leave him alone unless he tries to eat near one of their nests.
The tank itself is
smaller than I'd like 35 gallons, live planted, 18,000k aqua glo full spectrum lighting, Rena Filstar X1 for the filtration, and really it just kind of runs itself. The substrate is a mix of sand from the lake our cabin is on (that's been in there close to 10 years now), and that black crushed stuff that's $20/bag that I can't recall the name of offhand.
We saw massive improvements in water quality once we ditched flaked/pelleted foods and went to frozen or live for the fish, so their diet consists of bloodworms, beef heart, brine shrimp, small feeder fish (generally chopped up), mealworms, waxworms, small crickets,
Emerald Entree (or something similar, if we make it at home instead of buying it), they share the same seaweed that the saltwater fish get, though they have their own clip, and on occasion they get squid bits or other scraps of healthy food.
What misses them, the algae eater gets, and the algae eater is usually the one who eats most of the seaweed.
The fish also seem to have better color, more energy, better disease resistance, and
unfortunately breed more prolifically.
It's been a
cichlid tank for a little over a year now.
Annnd, now that I've bored you all to tears with the tank story, here are the pics!
