I have three cichlids: Hitler, Schindler, and Himler. I've had Hitler the longest and he is my favorite of the three. The problem is that i bought my third cichlid, Himler, about a month ago. The three all got along surprisingly well until about two days ago, i went out of town for a day and when i got back, Hitler wasnt himself and he just sat in the corner of the tank for hours, so i looked at him a little closer and i saw that all of his fins were shredded and mangled. So at first i thought it was fin rot or something but then i watched the tank for a while and i saw that Himler was attacking Hitler and trying to attack Schindler but Schindler is just small enough to hide under this fake branch thing where Himler cant get to him. I was under the impression the all my cichlids were males because they all have egg spots, but now im starting to think that Himler may be a female and is just PMSing or something. So i ended up puting Himler in a 5 1/2 gallon tank. I'm not sure what to do any advice would be helpful. Here's some pictures http://photobucket.com/albums/y168/Snausage44/Aquarium/

hitler's fins are shredded badly, do you have a quarantine tank? the water in the Q-tank should be pristine, im not too famaliar with chichlids, but a low salt solution should heal the fins slowly. also, you can try the pima/melafix combination. best of luck.

Snausage, you might want to give Captk a shout as I know he has cichlids.... he just might be able to help you out!

Hey Tyler, I'll PM him for you and direct him to this thread.

THANKS CUZ

Why aren't u at work??

I PM'd captk, so I'm sure he'll be around before too much longer......

all we had was an a/c and we got done early.

I just noticed that little Schindler is beating up on Hitler now too... whats the deal?

Should i just put them all together and let the best fish win? Because i dont want three separate tanks.

If ya ask me... I think you need more "stuff" in your tank, like hiding spots, etc... cichlids are territorial, so Himler might think that your basically "wide open" tank is all his. Maybe if you break it up more with some fake plants, caves, rocks, etc he will claim his own spot and Hitler and Schlindler will have their own... but I'm just guessin.

Hi all,

A couple of questions first. How big is the tank? How big are the fish?

Ciclids are very territorial but some do better than others in tank sharing. They natural environment are rocky shore of a lake so they want lots of rocks and hidding places.

The Evil one looks like a marble peacock. The shy one could be a peacock as well because of the head shape but I can't see much of him in the pic. Has the blue one get dark vertical strips along the body?

One other thing, do you have water quality readings and a pic of the tank itself?

I just posted a pic of the tank, its a 55g. Schindler (the colbalt one) is about 3 inches, Hitler (the beat up one) was about 4 inches.. but some of his tail is missing so hes a little shorter now, and Himler is just a tiny bit smaller than Hitler.

Schindler doesnt have any stripes, hes completely blue, i posted a new pic of him as well.

As for the water quality... all i know is that the nitrite and ammonia are both at 0.

I was going to stack a bunch of big rocks in a corner and make some caves, but im going to be moving soon so i figured i should just wait until after the move... if i can.

http://photobucket.com/albums/y168/Snausage44/Aquarium/

PS: I dont really have Tide in the aquarium.. its behind it.

Yeah, your tank size is good but the setup is not so good for ciclids.

Don't just stack up a bunch of rocks in one corner because it will just mean that one of them will claim the whole lot as his own and lock everyone else out.

What you need to do is to create zones. Front/back/left/centre/right. If they can't see each other, they don't fight. Have either a rock wall (with caves) along the centre part of the tank extending from one side to the other and leave a decent gap behind as well so that the fish in the back can't see the ones in the front. If that is too hard then have three or more seperate piles of rocks so that they can claim individual caves and space. Don't set it up so that there is constant boundary disputes.

BTW, ciclids do interbreed within a specie so just because they don't look alike doesn't mean they will ignore each other, especially males.

The beaten up one should heal fairly quickly with good water, peace and quiet and some TLC. Probably not a good idea to reintroduce it until the tank is setup properly so he will get beaten up again.

thanks captain... can you tell if my fish are male or fe? Do egg spots always mean its a male?

Egg spots is a good indication but I have seen fish that I swear are females become male so nothing is a given unless you start to see eggs and frys in their mouth!

your Schindler looks identical to my blue. BLue is mostly Colbalt, and whut a little sh*t head he is! I love your marbled peacock by the way, he is gorgeous, even if he is a terror!