African Cichlids Eat Plants

Mr.Todd

So I have had this batch of cichlids for like 6 months now. I have always had plastic plants in the aquarium… About a month ago I moved my fish into a new much larger aquarium, trying to be sneaky I mixed in some live plants with the fake ones. I had two huge Amazon swords and a very very tall (28in?) plant that kind of looks like a micro-sword.

So everything was great for a week but I thought for sure the plants would be dinner any time soon. Think again! The fish did not even bother the plants! They ate algae off of the leaves but they did not even think about actually eating the plants.

So after about a month of this I found this beautiful little female yellow lab at the PetCo so I put her in the tank. One of the first things she did was to go peck on the sword… At this point I thought “uhh oh..” but I did not think she would take down the whole aquarium. Then the next thing I know she is cutting off HUGE branches from the swords and then after about a week of this THE OTHER FISH JOIN IN AS WELL!

Needless to say there is not much plant life other then plastic at this point…. I wonder if one could trick them into not eating the plants… Hum…

Fish are crazy…
:P :P

Lupin

Oh well..Plants do not suit the Rift Valley biotopes. Anubias and Javan ferns will have a better chance surviving their wrath.;)

herefishy

Many cichlids, including Mbuna, are hebivorous. This means, plants plus mbuna are not campatible. I must admit, I tried this once, fed alot of veggie flake and still the little critters ate my plants. I guess the moral to this story is, if you have mbuna, plastic plants should be in the tank. Better yet, rocks on which to grow algea. Your fish will love that.