Kribensis?

[John H]

Hi all! I'm new here.

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I'm planning on getting a 55 gallon as a starter for me.

I want to have Kribensis in there... and breed them.
...

How many would fit in a 55 gallon? 8 females and 3 males?

And can I have any other chichlids in there without any agression problems? What chichlids won't get stressed out from the agressive breeders?

Help please.

 

[Evan]

Personally I wouldn't keep more than 2 males in a 4ft tank but your mileage may vary. In my experience, Pelvicachromis pulcher forms strong pair bonds. Once they have paired up I always end up with the same amount of male and females regardless of what I started with.

The problem with keeping other fish with your breeding groups is fry predation. As long as your prepared to deal with that there are quite a few fish that could be put with the kribs. Any particular type of fish you are interested in?

 

[Fishsticks]

My problem with keeping other fish with Kribs is that they would always herd all of the other fish into a corner while the fry were young and wouldn't let them move about the tank. This made for some crowded tank corners with all of my fish stuck right next to each other.

 

[tjudy]

One of the nice things about the Pelvicachromis genus is that once a pair has bonded all you really need in the tank is the pair. Sometimes a pair bond is weak and an extra female will help to keep the pair bonded, but I have not experienced that with P. pulcher. That species is also pretty readily available, so I would opt for a single pair or trio. If the male were lost for some reason a replacement can usually be found pretty easily. If you want to breed them I would stay away from bottom-dwelling fry-eating tank mates such as other cichlids, mormyrids, eels or catfish (other than Corydoras). Tetras, rasboras, danios, barbs are all good in the water above the pair, and the cichlids can usually defend fry against them for at least a few weeks... plety of time to get some fry out of there if you want to save them. Livebeares work well also.