Fishing Q&A

Blue Acara tropical fish - Breeding and General information please! (Preferably own experiences!)?

Im thinking about getting 1 male and 1 female blue acara and try to breed them. Some websites say it is quite easy - they lay eggs on a "Pre-cleaned" stone/rock (What does pre-cleaned mean??) I have a 3 foot 28 gallon(?) tank would that be ok? Are blue acaras ok with other fish like guppys or even clown loaches??? so some information please! :-)

Public Comments

1. I know nothing about Blue Acaras, however if you go to a site like this one - http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_blueacara.php - not only will you get some good information from owners, you can ask their advice as well, based on their experiences!
2. You can run this by fivespeed or 8 in the Corner, or Sir Ghapy, but I'd say compatibility with a Blue Acara and the fish you listed should be fine. You probably are going to want 3 females and 1 male though I THINK, not sure on that 100%. Precleaned on the rocks means they clear the surface before the female deposits eggs on it. You can also use the link on my profile to get extensive help with cichilds too. I think if you kept just those cichilds and nothing else, in terms of cichilds, you'd be fine, but where are you going to put the fry? Blue Acara are not difficult to spawn from what I've read. JV
3. They are wonderful fish, Cichlid family from America, it's fascinating to watch them preparing to breed, you should provide plenty of stones for them to choose from, they both take turns pecking at the rock surface to clean it, then the female lays the eggs, the male follows behind to fertilise them, they take turns fanning the eggs and keeping them clean, one does this while the other guards the general area. While they might tolerate some tankmates as they grow, they will NOT allow any near the nest site, they will bully anything in with them to death if they think they are a threat to their young. When the eggs are ready to hatch, they will want to dig pits to transfer them to, if you can, try to get gravel just larger than sand size, then you will see them going through the full sequence. The best filter to have in the breeding tank is a sponge filter BTW, the babies will feed off it, as the eggs hatch, if you drop a quarter of a tablet of "Brewers yeast" into the tank, there will be enough food for the growing young. Good Luck. EDIT, if you have 1 male to 3 females, 2 of the females will be killed. If you cannot get a ready made breeding pair, buy 6 young, grow them, you should get at least 1 pair (probably 2) sell the excess ones back to the shop when the pair is formed.
4. Acara's are very nice fish, and not terribly aggressive for cichlids, but - they do reach a respectable size and a 28 gallon tank will be rather confining in the long term - though you can start with it you should have plans of upgrading in the future. To keep them with additional tankmates you most certainly need to provide a larger tank. For tankmates: A breeding pair need a species tank - they become defensive when they have a brood to protect and will pick away at any smaller fish, and do their best to deter larger. If you want to just enjoy the fish and not worry about breeding then you can make a nice community tank around the Acara pair - the important part is including an egg preditor in the tank so that the brood can't hatch. To do this you still need that larger tank. (They are very easy to breed, which is why it's sometimes best just to enjoy keeping them and not bother with breeding, and don't forget you will need more tanks if you want to grow the fry out to a sellable size) To keep your acaras peacefully you need to have a mated breeding pair. If you are lucky you might find a pair of adults for sale, but more often you need to start with a few juvenile specimens and let a pair form from them as they mature - then the rest would be removed. Just randomly buying a male and female could result in fighting and certainly doesn't guarantee compatibility. If this is the one and only tank you can use, there are similar choices of smaller cichlid species that will make much better use of the space you have.