# Thinking about purchasing jewel cichlids



## lmhollist (Aug 7, 2009)

Greetings!

I'm sort of a newcomer to the wonderul (and horribly addicting) world of cichlids. I say addicting because a roommate and I have suddenly moved from not knowing a thing about cichlids (even to the point that we called them chiclids rather than the correct pronounciation) to suddenly having an African Peacock tank, a Jack Dempsey tank and an Auratus that our LFS called Little **** before we took him home.

Anyway, I was in an LFS near to where I work today just wandering around when I came upon a beautiful mated pair of Jewel Cichlids (Hemichromis bimaculatus). Apparently the store was unaware that they were mating until fry appeared in the tank recently and the Jewels started killing off the other fish they were housed with.

I fell in love with these fish right away, and was sorely tempted to take them home with me without knowing a thing about this particular species but alas, reason won out and I went straight home to do a little research. I've had some trouble finding non-conflicting information about this type of cichlid so any advice, warnings or recommendations would be welcomed. I'm especially interested in knowing what other sorts of cichlids they can be kept with (if that's even possible). We have an empty 55g cycling right now with no fish in it so there isn't a problem as far as where we will keep the fish. I just wanted to know a little bit more about them before jumping in.

Thanks!


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## BRANT13 (Feb 18, 2009)

IMHO id do a species only tank a 29G or 20L would be suitable.....they can get very nasty when spawning as u found out from the LFS...this being said its not impossible to keep other things with them just hard to do in a 55G or smaller IMO. Very easy fish to care for id say go for it.....awesome fish IMO. Any questions just ask.


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