Hi friends, I know I'm not keen on cichlids, but let me tell you a short story about my newcoming friend, with a personality!
Yes, as usually I was in a Lfs with my friend charlie and I saw a medium size grey fish, in a sump filter! I asked the owner what fish it was, but he'd forgotten what it was but for sure it was a cichlid. That fish was thin and weak, it had a bad scare on the flanks and I did feel pitty for it, so I told him haw much it costed but he gave it to me as a gift.
Back home I prepered a three foot tank for it, with clean aged water well filtered and placed some rocks with anubias, for it to feel safe. For the first week I've tought it was going to die couse it stayed in a corner and refused to eat. but during the weekend i cought some gamusia for it and by the next day they were vanished. I felt a relife, it was a good sign that it eat, so for that week I've gave it about 20 gambusia each day. then I tried again to give it pellets an greedily it accepted them, doing a big splash at the surface and thus making a mess on the floor.
Well now after a month and a half of having it, the colours came out gourgiusly beutiful, it's diet is mainly pellets and I give it white bait only as a treat, the bad scare on the side is healing, and it's stomach is rounded again. its recognise me as the one who brings it food but after eating it dares to flare and do side flicks to show that the tank is it's territory and it's strong enough to defend it. To make it's colours come out more, I do sometimes place him a mirror and one have to see it how aggresive it become to it. Than when I take the mirror away, it seems as if it has proudly won a big fight, swimming too and frow the tank flaring and flicking it's body to me! One thing I'm disapointed about is that still I don't know what spieces it is and I will be glad if there's someone who could help me to identify it, it looks like a central americam cichlid but I've found nothing with those coloures rather than that of a flowerhorn cichlid, but it don't have that large hump as flowerhorns have.
For it's courage and aggresivness I decided to name it achilles, and here are some pictures of it.