Why did my cichlid eat my other cichlid? how to prevent next time?

Question

i was checking out my fish and realized that one was missing. so i looked around and saw a little fish skeleton. What should I do with the fish that ate him? how do i prevent him from eating the others in the community?

Answer 1

Ingrid,

First thing you'd need to do here is list the species of fish you have, and more information about your tank, such as the size of tank and age of tank.  What are your water parameters?

The word cichlid tells very little.  There are cichlids from South American like the young lady mentioned, those are South American types, that grow large and tend to eat other fish.  There are Central Americans, New Worlds, and Africans too.  Each have different types of water needs and grow to different sizes.  In short, there are 1000s of different types of cichlids, so it's hard to say what's really going on here.

My guess is, they didn't eat the other fish outright, but rather it died from a fish or stress.  A body left in the tank, is not unusual to get picked and nibbled at.  Even more so if you have bottom feeders in the tank.  To find out what is really going on, we have to know what species you have, all tank occupants, tank size and water chemistry, please.

Answer 2

cichlids are predatory fish like oscars or jack dempseys. usually if the fish are bigger than they are, they will leave the other fish alone, but if the one that ate the other fish was the bigger fish, they will most likely hunt all the smaller ones.

try putting some feeder goldfish in the tank once in awhile. it will go after those instead of your other fish.

Answer 3

Now you know they are just mean fish.  Not a lot you can do about it.

Answer 4

feed it more and give it a too too to wear

poor thing hes probly all swiming in da nude..how rude?!?!