A club for owners of Parrot Cichlids

I have had two parrots for 8 years. One, is only about 5.5 inches long, but the other one, my male, is over 10 inches long and beefy. He is built like a tank and can be quite aggressive. If it is small enough to fit in their mouth, they will suck it up. Anything that is small and non-agressive can always be considered a potential meal. My opinion for the future is that the sword tails are the mostly likely to be eaten, the corys maybe, and if the red-tail shark gets to be fully grown, it may have a fighting chance. The biggest problem is trying to provide hiding place for those fish. Typically, red-tails are very rarely seen. When parrots get bigger, and you may have already experienced this, they tend to like doing a lot of rearranging. Meaning, that any plants that are rooted or anchored down by gravel will get pulled up and moved around. I stopped fixing my plants years ago. Now, they just float on the top. This is going to expose your other fish and give them even a better chance of being stressed out by the parrots and even possibly eaten.

I really don't know anything about your other fish.

The only other fish that lives with my parrots is a pim's pictus which is over 11 inches long. He is big fish, and typically likes to fight with my big parrot. Eight years ago, when I first got the parrots, they had other tank mates like a convict cichlid and a jewel cichlid. Due to various reasons, mostly old-age, they are all gone now.

As for you tank, in my opinion, they can live quite happily their entire lives in a 55 gallon tank.

Thanks for listening.

Giulio