Bujurquina vittata (Yellow banded acara)

[Sinister-Kisses]

I figured since I had such a hard time finding ANY real information on these guys, I'd start a thread so anyone searching in the future might have better luck than I did lol. I just received 10 Bujurquina vittata, or Yellow banded acara. They are doing well after their flights and this is them enjoying some blood worms as dinner after being added to their QT tank about 4 hours ago. Sorry for the grainy video but I have the tank light off while they settle. The plan is to move them into my 6ft, 125gal which I will be redoing as a South American community, based around a school of angelfish. There's also a school of diamond tetras, a few Bolivian rams, and a few German rams - though the dominant male is quite the douche to everyone else so I'm thinking when move day comes I might have to give the Germans a tank of their own instead.

What little I did find online about the vittata seemed to imply they are relatively peaceful and should be a good fit. Looking forward to getting the tank set up and everyone moves in once their QT is complete. Will post my experiences with the vittata as they mature.

https://flic.kr/p/2pMCg7K

 

[Sinister-Kisses]

Welp, that dream lasted all of 3 days.

Turns out they are NOT as peaceful as the little bit of info I'd found, implied they were.

I had picked up a half dozen small angelfish at the same time as the vittata, to add to the SA community tank when everyone is ready to be lumped together as my current angel tank has only five and I wanted a larger school in the bigger tank. Because they came in together and because they all appeared to be quite healthy, I put them together in the same 55gal QT tank - you can see some of the angels in the video I posted.

Yesterday morning when I checked in on them to see how everyone was doing, I immediately saw one of the vittata with a chunk of what was clearly once a fish in it's mouth. After taking stock of what was in the tank, it was clear it had been one of the two smaller angelfish. While I was 90% sure the angelfish had indeed been healthy and would not have passed away "naturally" overnight, I was hesitant to believe the vittata actually killed it - again, thinking these guys should be pretty peaceful. That bit me in the ass and I'm seriously kicking myself now - this morning on my way out the door for work, I peeked in on them again and it's a good bloody thing I did. Overnight they slaughtered two more angelfish and I'm TICKED - one of the two was my favourite of the new angels. I grabbed a net and pulled out the remaining angelfish quickly. The two they killed had their faces ripped off.

God I'm annoyed, I really loved that one angelfish. Was going to be such a unique little beauty when it grew up. Plus, now I have no idea what I'm doing to do with the damn vittata! There were zero plans for me to keep them in a species tank, they were 100% meant to go into the 6ft SA tank. Clearly they can't be trusted in that set up now. I suppose the plus side is that I learned this while they were still in QT and NOT before I'd put everyone together in the 125. Who knows how many fish they'd take out before I realized, and having to catch them all out of a well decorated 6ft tank at that point would have been a total pain. But I'm still super butt hurt about that one angelfish.

 

[SilverArowanaBoi]

Welp, that dream lasted all of 3 days.

Turns out they are NOT as peaceful as the little bit of info I'd found, implied they were.

I had picked up a half dozen small angelfish at the same time as the vittata, to add to the SA community tank when everyone is ready to be lumped together as my current angel tank has only five and I wanted a larger school in the bigger tank. Because they came in together and because they all appeared to be quite healthy, I put them together in the same 55gal QT tank - you can see some of the angels in the video I posted.

Yesterday morning when I checked in on them to see how everyone was doing, I immediately saw one of the vittata with a chunk of what was clearly once a fish in it's mouth. After taking stock of what was in the tank, it was clear it had been one of the two smaller angelfish. While I was 90% sure the angelfish had indeed been healthy and would not have passed away "naturally" overnight, I was hesitant to believe the vittata actually killed it - again, thinking these guys should be pretty peaceful. That bit me in the ass and I'm seriously kicking myself now - this morning on my way out the door for work, I peeked in on them again and it's a good bloody thing I did. Overnight they slaughtered two more angelfish and I'm TICKED - one of the two was my favourite of the new angels. I grabbed a net and pulled out the remaining angelfish quickly. The two they killed had their faces ripped off.

God I'm annoyed, I really loved that one angelfish. Was going to be such a unique little beauty when it grew up. Plus, now I have no idea what I'm doing to do with the damn vittata! There were zero plans for me to keep them in a species tank, they were 100% meant to go into the 6ft SA tank. Clearly they can't be trusted in that set up now. I suppose the plus side is that I learned this while they were still in QT and NOT before I'd put everyone together in the 125. Who knows how many fish they'd take out before I realized, and having to catch them all out of a well decorated 6ft tank at that point would have been a total pain. But I'm still super butt hurt about that one angelfish.

Damn! I didn't realize that those acaras would be so feisty. So sorry for your loss. Perhaps you could try a different kind of acara? Dwarf acaras are very peaceful (from experience) and so are EBAs.

 

[Sinister-Kisses]

Nah, I think I'm just going to buy some more Bolivians and up their numbers from the 3 I currently have. American cichlids, especially South, are not easy to find where I am - other than the super common angels and rams of course - so anything else would require spending ANOTHER boatload of money and expensive shipping so I'm not really interested in doing that again just to "see" if it works out and possibly end up with more fish I don't have a plan B for lol.

 

[tlindsey]

I personally would use the term mild aggressive and not peaceful. Especially when cichlids are involved. Even the smaller species can kill from my experience.

 

[Sinister-Kisses]

Okay let me clarify - I have kept cichlids almost exclusively for 32 years. When I say "peaceful" I always mean "peaceful for CICHLIDS". Not like cory peaceful or guppy peaceful lol. I probably should have specified that for anyone using this as a guide for this species themselves.

Which is exactly what I expected going in - they're cichlids, I wasn't expecting ZERO possible aggression at all. I was expecting more like angelfish behaviour - what I would consider "angelfish peaceful". Yeah, they can be pushy but I wasn't actually expecting them to SLAUGHTER tank mates and rip faces off. I expected they would be able to live relatively major-issue-free with my existing fish...some mild bickering, particularly between their own species...some chasing now and then, maybe some minor fin damage here and there...but mostly a community of fish that held their own without major problems and that I didn't need to REALLY be worried about violence-related deaths for the most part.

 

[Fallen_Leaves16]

Huh, that's pretty weird. Never had issues with vittata slaughtering fish they couldn't easily fit into their mouths- they were prone to consuming small tetras, but seemed docile enough towards whatever they didn't manage to eat. My LFS brings them in every now and then, and I had two juveniles in a 55G SA cichlid tank for about a year, until I tore it down and gave away/sold the inhabitants. They were certainly a bit more pushy than EBAs, but nothing unreasonable.
Did they seem to harass the other fish? Or did they just decide to decapitate the angels?

 

[Sinister-Kisses]

Nope. Whenever I was watching them, they paid no attention to the angels. The angels are small, but the vittata aren't huge yet either - the angels definitely weren't small enough to be bite size to them by any stretch of the imagination.

I certainly won't trust them in my SA tank now. Even if they leave the larger angels alone, I'd be very concerned for the rams and diamond tetras.

 

[FINWIN]

I personally would use the term mild aggressive and not peaceful. Especially when cichlids are involved. Even the smaller species can kill from my experience.

For real. If I had a buck for each 'peaceful cichlid' I've kept that wasn't I'd go to Tahiti. Every eba acara I had except for one was mildly aggressive. Especially after turning adult! I had a wild type pulcher on my summer punch list but now I know what to expect.

Andinoacara pulcher

"Gold Union" (I forget the proper name)

As far as setups turning on a dime, tell me about it. I've got a new situation in the 225 right now. Everything was cool then in one night it went sideways. Cichlids never let you get comfortable for too long that's for sure.

 

[FINWIN]

Nope. Whenever I was watching them, they paid no attention to the angels. The angels are small, but the vittata aren't huge yet either - the angels definitely weren't small enough to be bite size to them by any stretch of the imagination.

I certainly won't trust them in my SA tank now. Even if they leave the larger angels alone, I'd be very concerned for the rams and diamond tetras.

Cichlids are night assassins. They always do the dirty when you aren't around.