Central American Cichlids

Central American cichlids have a well-deserved reputation for being fiercely territorial and extremely prolific. When a pair of convict cichlids or Jack Dempseys has decided it's time to spawn, anything in the area will be killed or driven into hiding, often including fish larger than the breeding pair.

Most of the cichlids from Central America are substrate spawners, meaning they lay their eggs in a specially chosen patch of gravel, usually in a defensible area, and guard them until they're a few weeks old. By that time, the pair is usually ready to spawn again. In contrast to the mouthbrooders of Lake Malawi, who generally lay up to 30 eggs and ensure their hatching by carrying them in their mouths, substrate spawners often lay as many as 300 much smaller eggs, of which only a handful may reach adulthood.

In the aquarium, however, a lack of predators or other disruptions to the breeding cycle ensures the survival of most of the clutch. Thus every month or so a breeding pair can be expected to produce hundreds of young. For this reason, many fish keepers try not to allow pairing, by keeping only single specimens of a species, or segregating them by gender. Others deliberately pair them and use the fry as feeders for their larger predatory fish.

To browse the Central American cichlids I keep, use the navigation bar on the left.