# Rainbowfish with cichlids



## gryffin (Feb 11, 2008)

I've got boesemani rainbowfish in with my severum and acara. One of the cookie cutter setups suggests boesemani with severum and it appealed to me because I had two rainbowfish I'd raised from fry and I wanted a severum.

I've had a couple of people express concern that rainbowfish won't tolerate being in with the cichlids, but so far, my experience is that the rainbowfish seem pretty unperturbed by the severum and the acara.

They are all juvies now though so I'm interested in hearing other people's experience with this combination. I have the option of moving my bows out into a 46G tank by themselves, but I'd really like prefer to make 46G an angel tank.


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## Guest (Dec 24, 2008)

as long as theres no aggression from the severum to the rainbow fish then your good.


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## Mikey13 (Apr 1, 2008)

By no means am i an expert, but i too, have tried this and so far i have mixed turquoise, Boesmani with a Krib and yellow labs with no problems. The bows are a mix of adults and young, and there is no aggression amongst the above species. Labs look for labs, and the krib kicks the lot of em' if they get too close to his spot. No harm though.


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## RyanR (Apr 29, 2008)

I've had pretty good luck so far... rainbows are great 'cuz they're active and shoaling... and bigger than tetra's, so they'll less likely to wind up as cichlid food. I bought all of the Australian rainbows that our LFS had for frontosa dithers. Works great!

Behaviorally, they get along fine with cichlids. I think the only "conflict" with New Worlds is water chemistry: rainbows tend to like neutral pH, and medium water hardness.

Only cichlid-rainbow problem I've had was our New Guinea rainbow (that we've had forever) I think was trying to do the "mating" dance with our female Blackbelt.... kinda wiggling and showing off.... the next morning, the rainbow's upper jaw was messed up... and has been ever since.

-Ryan.


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