Will they destroy my plants? What fish do i get? PLEASE HELP!!?

Question

Iv just set up a planted tank (30 gallons) and i know that some cichlids eat live plants? so what cichlids could I have?

Oh! and can you have malawi cichlids with live plants?

PLEASE ANSWER!!

Thanks!

Answer 1

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/la...

This site should answer all of your questions :)

Good Luck!

Answer 2

Most of the larger (5-6") cichlids will tear up plants and at the very least keep digging them up to rearrange the tank to their liking.

The best cichlids for planted tanks are the smaller ones from Lake Tanganyka.  The julidochromis and brichardi groups come to mind first.  Also some of the riverine cichlids from West Africa are good, the kribensis is one such.  I keep all these and none of them bothers the plants in their tanks.

They are fairly easy to spawn and take good care of their fry.  The brichardi actually will start a new family as soon as the first fry are free swimming.  The older fry will actually help take care of the younger ones and you can have many different sizes of brichardi in a tank with nobody eating anybody else.