[F4A]

Cichlid - YouTube

What is my Cichlid doing?

He is moving gravel and burrowing under the rock, is this breeding behavior? Should I be leaving this area alone when cleaning?

 

[jaysee]

It's doing some house cleaning. Cichlids will do that - move things around. I'd leave it be when you clean.

 

[Agent13]

I would say thats normal... well as normal as cichlids get ;-)
One of mine will spend hours every day picking up sand off his rock then going over to his least favorite cichlids crater(the acei built a mountain of sand then dug a perfect crater in the middle) and dumps the sand in there haha. So the demasoni likes to clean his rock then attempt to fill the acei's crater to be a pest. Then cuts a trench in the sand between their territories like "don't cross this! But I'm still gonna mess up your house mwahaha"
Just let them do what they want. It makes them happy and it's funny to watch.