Jack Dempsey with plants
- Thread starter Ryan1783
- Start date
It depends on the fish itself, they do dig but I've had pretty decent success keeping plants with most CA cichlids if you plant them right, with a small rock ontop. I also find that anubias does much better than more fragile plants.
Beside uprooting plants, JDs are considerably more aggressive than Geos, and may in time destroy them. Although JDs are lower on the aggression scale than many other Central Americans, in general, South American cichlids have a hard time standing up to Mexican and "most" Central American cichlid aggression.
Mine are some of the only cichlids I have that don't uproot or eat plants. They are a pretty laid back pair though. As said earlier, they may not be the best tank mates for geos though.
When I plan to have a planted tank with large cichlids like a jack, I buy them young. I give the roots of my vallisnera, rotalas, s repens, and bacopa around a year for their roots to grow very strong while the very young jack is growing. I use eco complete and I tend to not see Jack's uproot plants with that substrate. Right now I have no problems with my jack and other plants.
I've read that the best plants to have with Cichlids are Anubias and Java Ferns -- I feel like they will personally nibble at any plant depending on the Cichlid though. My Java Ferns are known to uproot as well but the guy I bought them from fish-lined them to some (what looks like) Cocoa Fiber and they have not uprooted even with all the bubblers and circulation pump I have going on.
One of my friends instead just covers all the stems and plants areas with rocks so that the cichlids arent able to pick up the gravel and uproot the plants.