Introducing Cichlids

[Xabien]

Hello. I was thinking of setting up a cichlid tank. i read that fish that are added to a tank that already has cichlids in it is bad because they have set up territories. So lets say I want to have about 10 cichlids in my tank. Would I have to put them all in together? Surely that would cause ammonia and nitrite problems.
Thanks

 

[Fish_fanatic]

I wouldn't put in all ten at the same time because like you said it will most likely cause a problem. When ever I add a new cichlid to the tank, I re-arrange the whole tank so that all existing territories are lost and all the fish have to establish new territories. This way there is less fighting and the new fish wount be harassed to death.

 

[Enki]

This is one of the places where fishless cycling or bio-spira can be really helpful. I fishless cycled my 50 gallon and added 14 cichlids at once, I never had any sort of ammonia spike.

I was adding 5 drops of ammonia a day, way more than any amount of fish would have been producing. When I put the fish in the amount of ammonia available to the bacteria colony dropped, so to them it was as if I had lessened the bio-load. It is much easier for the bacterial colony to adjust downward

If you do want to add more fish later, you can move all the rocks around, this messes up all the boundaries the fish have set, and they have to work them all out again, giving the new fish a chance to claim some as well.