> Is it better to keep a mixture of species or all a single species?
> Is it better to have all fish the same size or should there be
> variation in size? How many fish (& of what size?) should I be able
> to keep in a 40-gallon tank? The tank is well-planted (plastic),
> well filtered and well-decorated with rocks and driftwood. Is the
> concept of "dither" fish a valid one in practice? What about
> non-cichlid species (any algae-eaters)?
>
> Any suggestions you could offer would be appreciated,
Keeping cichlids is more an art than a science in my opinion, that
is, there are not straight answers to overcome their aggressive
behaviors, at least in the regularly relatively small tanks where we
keep them. There are of course many guidelines that could help in
this regard. I would suggest reading a "meeting minute" we had in
Fishroom's cichlid room about controlling aggression in cichlids,
you can find it under the meeting minute section in the cichlid room
companion home page http://www.petsforum.com/cichlidroom/
Good luck
___
/ at at \
___^^^^__\_-_/__^^^^__________________________Juan Miguel Artigas Azas
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1464/ San Luis Potosi, Mexico