Try local ma and pa pet stores for GTs, if they don't have them, ask for special order. Convicts are a lot more aggressive than Salvini,, IME....my Salvini got killed by either FM or Blue Acara early on.
120 Gallon CA/SA Cichlid Tank Stocking
- Thread starter FastFisher5
- Start date
buy the Salvini bigger than the GT if possible, so the GT should be 3" when you buy it for sexing purposes. A male GT can grow around 12" while a female may hit 8" in extreme cases. The Salvini will only go about 7", maybe 8" if you 're lucky, so he will need to establish dominance before the GT realize they are big bad brutes and own everything. Just my 2 cents.....other peoples' experiences may differ. GTs are NOT as bad as people think, but a big male is quite a force.....however, generally they still don't go out of their way to kill things like something in the Amphilophus "family"
I definitely love GTs. I'll be able to find a salvini locally I think. It's a shame Red Tiger motaguense are so aggressive. I've been reading about them and love their look but salvs have similar colors and stay smaller
I have heard of a lot of people who keep GTs with Oscars, believe it or not. Whether they are male or female GTs is a different question.
RTMs and Salvini do share color and pattern similarities, but the adult shapes are very different from one another. RTMs are from the Parachromis genus, known for "monstrous" behavior in aquariums; this genus includes the Jaguar, Wolf, Yellowjacket, False Yellowjacket, and Loiselle's cichlids. They can be difficult to convince to "play well with others" and may end up as "the fish you leave alone and it will leave you alone" or it could simply kill everything in your tank because it "had a bad scale day".
Salvin's falls under a recently added genus, "Trichromis", (which appears to be monophyletic) but was previously classified as Heros (and likely others), which is a generally peaceful Discus-resembling group of fish. I think we should both wait and see how many more times the scientists are gonna change things before we decide what it's best tankmates are for now LOL
Last edited:
I'd love to add a GT and an Oscar but I'm not sure if I can do it in my tank. And yeah RTM are meanies haha. Thanks for the science info too, I'm majoring in marine sciences so I always appreciate responses like that
Definitely stay away from an RTM. I just had to rehome my female because she was beating the living hell out of everything I had. She would go out of her way to attack my fish even when they wherent around her lol.
Haha sorry to hear that. I can definitely say that I see my cichlids nature coming out. My JD doesn't let anything near it's few caves. Even the pleco has to make a dash for it sometimes haha. My FM doesn't like caves, he just swims all around. And my Carpintis kinda hangs toward the top or the plants... And on other news my fish finally had her babies yetserday. Silver Lyretail Mollie male with a Dalmatian Mollie female
I'm hopefully buying a new filter for my 60 this weekend and will send it over to my new larger tank. Between the Marineland 350 or 400 vs the Aquaclear 70. I want one that'll fit on my tank when I upgRade
