Bad Behavior

[ABENSO]

Hello again,

So my next set of questions is about behavior. My livingstonii is the only one in my tank (55 gallon, 1 of the following livingstonii, arautus, electric blue and tropheus) who doesnt seem aclimated. Its been just under a week, and for whatever reason, hes the most skiddish, and he hides up by my heater. And when i get to the front of my tank, the other three swim up and stare at me and swim like normal. Any thoughts? he is one of the smallest. hes only about XXXXXXXXXXX size, the electric blue is the same size and does fine though. my tropheus and arautus are about XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX This size. Now my other question is about my arautus, hes just slightly bigger than my tropheus, making him the biggest in the tank, but he picks on my tropheus chasing him all around the tank. I know they are territorial, and semi aggressive, but besides having my water at around 77 degrees, any other tricks or anything to calming down such behavior? Whats weird is he only really picks on the tropheus, he pretty much leave the other one alone. I have some pics of them too, just because I dig looking at fish, and assume everyone else is the same! Thanks a lot again, and again, this is just such a great resource!!

Aaron

p.s. any thoughts as to what kind of tropheus this is??


Tropheus


Electric Blue


Arautus


Livingstonii

[Pam Chin]

Hi Aaron,

oh!!! Well I a made a few assumptions in my previous post, so lets correct that first.

Electric blue - I need to see a better picture of that fish, I can't tell what it is in that shot, except that it is not Sciaenochromis fryeri. That is some kind of mbuna (vegetarian)

Livingstoni - That is actually Nimbochromis venustus, not livingstoni.

I stand by the M. auratus and not sure which Tropheus that is, but it is a Tropheus of some kind.

Okay, Melanochromis auratus is the meanest cichlid of all time. This fish probably has your venustus up in the corner, and he is so terrorized that he will never come back down again. Melanochromis loves the chase as much as the kill, and are not good fish for your community tank, they will just take over the tank and trash everyone. I highly suggest returning that fish and picking something else. They are just bad news.

Cichlid Power!
Pam