Publication2 med aquascape Publication1cs complete | Page 136

A Costa Rica Rocky River bed is the chosen theme
for the Black Belt cichlid
territory boundaries and spawning sites.
The choice of fish will be quite extensive, but be
careful when keeping with other Paratheraps or
Vieja species due to conspecific aggression. It may
work out for a short time, but when they become
sexually mature, you will sure to have problems.
Very large aquariums would be ideal where you
could possibly keep them together with large C.
bocourti. My advice would be to keep the V. macu-
licauda as the main dominant species, then
choose, smaller centrals based around their cho-
sen biotope.
Smaller Thorichthys and Cryptoheros species are
ideal as well as some of the medium species like
Rocio octofasciata and members of the Astatheros
group.
Remember that V. maculicauda has a large distri-
bution range, therefore, will be plenty of scope
regarding cichlid species when choosing a biotope
specific tank.
Vieja maculicauda is a great fish to base a biotope
display aquarium around as they have the widest
distribution range of any Vieja species. Found on
the Atlantic slopes from the Rio Usumacinta drain-
age to the Rio Chagres Panama, many different
environments, fish and cichlids will be found living
sympatric.
I wanted to represent a rocky riverbed and as I al-
ready had a small group of A. centrarchus, I decid-
ed to base the aquarium on a Costa Rica River.
The rock placement is quite important in larger
aquaria so these were arranged in two points. The
large boulder on the left side and the two large
boulders on the right side, where the two pieces
of drift wood are positioned. By using the boulders
as pinpoints, I can arrange the smaller rockwork
around them. I wanted to make the left hand side
look slightly higher, so arranged driftwood and
beech tree branches. The aquascape has plenty of
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