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TROPICAL Can I add a tankmate for Trevor?
I’ve taken on my brother’s fish now he’s going to university—it’s a Salvin’s cichlid and he’s in a 1.2m-long tank. He’s about 12cm in size at the moment and he’s called Trevor. I’m wondering if he’s lonely and whether I should get him a friend or a mate to share the tank with. My brother is fine with the idea but said I should get some advice. So please could you help?
EVIE HUGHES
JEREMY REPLIES: Salvin’s are Central American cichlids, known for their bright yellow colour, with black pattern and red breast, but also their aggression. If you want to add other fish to Trevor’s tank, you would be best to opt for Syndontis catfish—give them pipes to hide in—and large dither fish species, such as silver dollars.
Salvin’s are pair-forming substrate/cave brooders so if Trevor is male, if you could find perhaps a 10cm female—look for a blotch in the dorsal fin and on the gill cover—and try to pair them, but if she isn’t ready to spawn Trevor will seek to remove her from his tank by force and may kill her. If she is ready, they will breed, but then you’ll have several hundred more Salvin’s, and they’re not an easy fish to rehome and sell on. If you add another male by mistake, he will be attacked and killed, as well as other similarly sized South and Central American species that Trevor will see as a threat to his food and territory, such as Jack Dempsey cichlids, Texas cichlids, and green terrors. If you do go down the mating route, arm yourself with a tank divider, a net, and maybe even another tank.
TROPICAL Do these mushrooms pose a risk?
I have a temperate set-up with danios and corys. In the tank there’s a spar of driftwood that rises above the waterline. I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that various types of fungi are growing on the wood, as shown in the photo I’ve sent. Is there any risk of this being harmful to my fish, especially if dislodged during maintenance?
SIMON HILL
NEALE REPLIES: The short answer is probably not. The ‘mushrooms’ that you can see are the fruiting bodies of saprotrophic fungi working their way through the wood. Most fungi live by simply digesting dead and decaying organic matter, and that’s exactly what these are doing here. It’s hard to know for sure if they’re breaking down just the wood, or other organic matter, such as une
