Fire mouth death :(

[Cichlid.Keeper]

Hello everyone,
I went to this page because it is my favorite to talk about anything regarding freshwater even if my fish was unhealthy. Well this death was devastating for me because nothing lead up to it. I turned on my tank light last night and see a fish ripped up into shreds. After looking at my fish I realized that the fish that died was my biggest 2 year old male firemouth.
My struggle is that I have no idea how this even happened. The inhabitants are 5 other firemouths, a parrot and a pleco. The tank is a 70gallon , parameters as of yesterday were pH 7.4 ammonia 0
after contemplating what happened I assumed that my other biggest firemouth, another male was guarding eggs and this one came along and got messed up. But I can't find any eggs. Please take your guesses on what happened, at this point I'm just curious.


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[mikem691]

How big is the parrot?

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[Cichlid.Keeper]

How big is the parrot?

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Fully grown female---6 inches
I have never seen her attack them though
The firemouths are 4 inches


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[mikem691]

May have just been a dominant thing like you said between the firemouths

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[Cichlid.Keeper]

May have just been a dominant thing like you said between the firemouths

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Oh alright How do I control the aggressive one now. He is attacking everyone


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[NigelK8485]

Oh alright How do I control the aggressive one now. He is attacking everyone


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You rearrange the tank to try to reset any territories that may have been formed and claimed. You can try removing him from the tank for a week or two and reintroducing him so he is the "new guy" in the tank and may lose his dominant stance. Add more females, reduce the number of males, add target fish to spread out aggression. I wouldn't recommend adding fish though, in my opinion your tank is very stocked. I would remove fish if I were you. I'd cut back to two or three firemouths, not five.

Those aren't guaranteed methods. It's part of having cichlids, sometimes they're just mean and aggressive and territorial and no matter what you do nothing will fix it.


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[Cichlid.Keeper]

You rearrange the tank to try to reset any territories that may have been formed and claimed. You can try removing him from the tank for a week or two and reintroducing him so he is the "new guy" in the tank and may lose his dominant stance. Add more females, reduce the number of males, add target fish to spread out aggression. I wouldn't recommend adding fish though, in my opinion your tank is very stocked. I would remove fish if I were you. I'd cut back to two or three firemouths, not five.

Those aren't guaranteed methods. It's part of having cichlids, sometimes they're just mean and aggressive and territorial and no matter what you do nothing will fix it.


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First I'm gonna go with the rearranging method. But I'm gonna have to figure something out because I have a 30lb rock structure that I siliconed and built by myself....so I don't know what I can do to move it


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[NigelK8485]

That has to take up quite a bit of space in the tank which gives you even less than 70 gallons of water space. I think you should seriously consider rehoming some fish.


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[Cichlid.Keeper]

That has to take up quite a bit of space in the tank which gives you even less than 70 gallons of water space. I think you should seriously consider rehoming some fish.


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Okay I will start looking...for now what do you think, can I put a plant or driftwood in his hideout


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