Bigger than Apistogramma and prettier than kribensis, the red cheek krobia could be the mid-sized community cichlid you’ve been looking for.
GABOR HORVATH Gabor is one of the UK’s most prolific fish breeders from his gorgeous fish house in Wales.
SOMETIMES I SPEND ages searching for fish I want only to realise after keeping them that they are not for me. In other cases, a fish I never knew I wanted finds its way to me and into my heart. This latter is what happened with the red cheek krobia, Krobia xinguensis. I’d seen pictures of them and they looked nice, but I didn’t feel inspired enough to search for them. Then a few months ago a local aquarist friend asked me if I was interested in rehoming his pair as they wouldn’t fit into his fast-flowing River Xingu biotope. Within hours another friend approached me saying that he had three adult red cheek krobia looking for new home. As my 120cm display tank needed something as a centrepiece I said yes to both of them and in a few weeks’ time I became the happy owner of five fully grown cichlids.
The surprises began when the first three of them arrived. Most online sources refer to Krobia xinguensis as a dwarf cichlid, so I expected something around the size and body build of a Bolivian ram, Mikrogeophagus altispinosus. The fish I received, however, were giants. In the wild they rarely reach 8cm in length, but in aquaria specimens over 15cm are very frequently seen—and the ones I now owned were close to it.
The arrivals
When I first saw the trio in the bucket they arrived in, my initial thoughts were (and I apologise in advance if I offend anyone, but growing up in Hungary meant that we ate what we caught when fishing) that they were perfect frying sized fish. The red cheek krobia is a chunky, thickset species, especially when compared to ‘real’ dwarf cichlids, but the bulkiness is just a façade for the shyness behind.
After releasing them they quickly disappeared among the plants. Despite of having lots of smaller fish swimming around freely, signalling that there was no imminent danger, it took almost a fortnight before they became brave enough to spend some time out in the open.
Two of the trio had paired up by then and started bullying the third. The victim—an otherwise very strong, fully grown male—was chased into the corner above the internal filter and wasn’t allowed to leave it, even for feeding. As it suffered severe fin damage, I decided to move him to another tank to recover.
The couple remaining in the tank spent most of the time together, so I hoped that
