The Daily Cichlid

Subtitle

South American Cichlid Care

South American Cichlid Care:


Water Conditions:

Pristine water required

25-29 degrees C or 82-90 degrees F

PH 6.5-7.0

Ammonia 0 ppm

Nitrites 0 ppm

Nitrates 0-10 ppm (maximum)


Pictured Left is a typical large south American Cichlid setup.


Substrate and decor?


Light coloured sand, light or natural coloured gravel with lots of live plants, silk fake plants, rocks, cave structures to provide cover, Line of sight cut off points and a feeling of security. These plants provide a refuge for your Cichlids if you have dominating fish. 

Live plants can be a pain in a cichlid tank because cichlids like to dig them up and they can be a complicated organism requiring a lot of upkeep by themselves as well as expensive ferts, lighting and substrate. Plants can also make it hard to clean your aquarium because you can't disturb the gravel or soil. So if you go fake but want the benefits real plants provide (more oxgen in the water, absorbs nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia) try throwing a pile of Hornwort and other low light, low maintenance plants such as Anubia's, Jungle Valiseria and other fast growing plants for a more natural look. When looking for real plants I would use stem plants only because they do not require their roots to be buried in the substrate. Use silk plants to fill in the background and mid ground spaces where their details wont be in the spot light. Silk plants can be expensive but you can get around this by going to your LDS (Local Dollar Store) and pick up bundles of silk fake vase plants at $1 a piece and they usually have long stems which makes them perfect for creating background, mid ground and fore ground. $10-$20 bucks will fill an entire aquarium with plants and you will be the envy of all your aquarium keeping friends because fake silk plants at aquarium stores are expensive ranging from $5-$20 each depending on the size and the only difference between aquarium store silk plants and dollar store plants is that aquarium store plants have anchors attached. You can create your own anchors by tying river rocks to the stems of dollar store plants or by setting rocks on top of the stems. 


It is best to over filtrate, especially when you get into more peaceful cichlids such as Angel Fish, Discus, and Rams which typically can be housed with other peaceful tropical fish as long as they are not small enough to fit in the Cichlid's mouth. 

Side note on Discus:
Discus are extremely sensitive to water conditions and may require an upkeep of 10-15% water change every 3-5 days and a 50% water change every two weeks. It is essential that the filtration is kept up and clean without harmful waste build up. I recommend a special media bag that gets rid of nitrates such as NitrateR by brightwell aquatics or other useful nitrate scrubbers. If you are into live plants that is another way to remove many harmful toxins and they will push your water change schedule to the 7 day mark. For Discus it is recommended that there is only a maximum of 5ppm of nitrates and a good long term way of creating this environment is by using seachem's pond matrix, brightwell aquatics nitrateR and real plants.  

Check out our Peaceful Cichlids Page For Profiles and tank mate compatibility Information otherwise check out our fish profile page and scroll down to the South American section.