Lake Victoria Basin, West African, Madagascar & Asian Species • input on riverine stocking idea

[Austinpetemo]

Bought myself 6 jewel cichlids. Got them from petsmart so i have no idea which specific one they are. Im hoping to have a 3 species tank once they begin breeding. Im waiting on a pair to form, i also want to get a group of kribs to get a pair. Then remove the others and just leave the pairs, and add a group of 6 or so congo tetras for dithers. Tank is a standard 55.

To try to cut down on aggression as much as possible i was thinking puting a bunch of territories on each respective end of the tank and leaving the center of the tank a little sparse so that their breeding sites would be as far apart as possible.

Ideas and input? Never done riverine cichlids before and any advice or personal experinces would be helpful and appreciated.

[DJRansome]

Jewels have a rep for killing everything else when they spawn. I'm interested to see if you get input from people with a different experience (I'm a reader about jewels, not a keeper of them).

[Austinpetemo]

Cmon, anyone? I know there has to be a few people who can input on this....

[NeptunesNeighborhood]

When Kribs breed they will take over upwards of 30 gallons. I would not suggest you keep breeding kribs with any other cichlids, especially jewels with their reputation; even if the jewels aren't aggressive at first, the nipping from the kribs will provoke them.

[Austinpetemo]

So i guess in that case i will be building a divider...

[prov356]

There are lots of options for riverine community tanks, but not if you start with jewels.

[bernie comeau]

When Kribs breed they will take over upwards of 30 gallons. I would not suggest you keep breeding kribs with any other cichlids

I think that really depends on a lot of things. What cichlids your keeping them with, to begin with. When i was a young kid, back in the mid '70's, I bred kribs in a 10 gal. grow up tank. They were older then there tankmates as they stayed in there for quite some time. When they bred they did not manage to claim anything more then a small corner of the tank with other cichlids like young cons . When they made it to the larger tank they most certainly were not able to claim space and never bred in a tank with cichlids like JD and RD....and eventually they got swallowed whole by somebody

IMO, with mature jewels in a 55 gal.......a good chance the kribs will never have the 'power' to actually own space.