Strange thing about my new cichlids

[Nina7777]

Hi All- I recently purchased 1 red zebra, 1 lemon yellow, 1 rusty, and one that i cannot find the name of anywhere although it is pretty common.

The lemon yellow and the "unknown" one love everything that I am feeding them...such as Spirulina flakes, cichlid bits.

But my red zebra and rusty (more so the red zebra) eat the flakes and them spit them out like they don't like them.

Any suggestions on what I could feed them? I tried seaweed in a clip but none of them liked that.

Other than this problem they all seem to be loving their new tank, and especially their huge rock which takes up half the tank and has all these holes and crevices that they LOVE exploring!

Thanks sooo much!

 

[jim bob]

hey, i went to wal-mart and i got "mini cichlid bites" their pretty new so they might not have them but if youve ever wacthed them move gravel they spit it out just like when they eat so for me its normal for them to spit it out. i never find any extra when i siphon it so im guessing they eat it later.

 

[Nina7777]

yeah that is what i have, Maybe they are eating them, just not in front of me?!

 

[thecichlidaddict]

The spirulina flakes are an important part of the diet, and can't easily be substituted.

When my fish don't eat I do the 'tough love' approach.

I remove all food from their diet except the one that they are not eating, and this I feed to them at every meal until they get hungry and start to eat. This rarely takes more then a week and the lack of food will not harm the fish. Once they do eat it, they will eat it from then on.

 

[Nina7777]

hmmmm......sounds like what i did to my loaches. I will give it a try, because everything else is great about these little guys!

by the way cichlidaddict, did i make ok choices with the fish i chose? and also do you know what my unknown one could be? its purple with grey vertical stripes?

 

[thecichlidaddict]

If 'lemon yellow' means Labidochromis Caeruleus then it sounds fine. The Maylandia Estherae (red zebra) will probably be the most aggressive fish in your tank, excepting the last one since we don't know what it is. If you can get a picture that would be a lot of help to identify it.

It sounds good, but as the fish grow and get more aggressive you will probably need to add a few more to distribute aggression a bit, Iodotropheus (rusty) tend to attract aggression especially. But you can cross that road when you get to it.