Brackish Central American Cichlids
- Thread starter WinterAlloy
- Start date
I just came across this thread today, and I am curious to see what was the final outcome with the Cubans.
I have kept Mayans and Black Belts in saltwater with SG as high as 1.018 for extended time without any issues. I did not have the same success with Cubans. My Cuban Cichlid was also acclimated gradually to 1.018 and looked OK at first, but after a few days appeared stressed and died. This was just an isolated case, and I haven't experimented further with additional Cuban cichlids.
I have yet to find any definitive scientific evidence that Cuban Cichlids will tolerate full strength marine for extended periods of time.
I have kept Mayans and Black Belts in saltwater with SG as high as 1.018 for extended time without any issues. I did not have the same success with Cubans. My Cuban Cichlid was also acclimated gradually to 1.018 and looked OK at first, but after a few days appeared stressed and died. This was just an isolated case, and I haven't experimented further with additional Cuban cichlids.
I have yet to find any definitive scientific evidence that Cuban Cichlids will tolerate full strength marine for extended periods of time.
Just sayin......
If tetracanathus was able to tolerate sea water for even short periods, don't you think they would have colonized other nearby Caribbean islands? Wouldn't there be a population on say.... Puerto Rico for example.
The island of Hispaniola is close, yet the endemic cichlid there is Nandopsis haitiensus.
It may be that when the ancient tetrancanthus/haitiensus ancestor Nandopsis (Cichlasoma) woodringi migrated, it had the ability to cross long stretches of sea a few million years ago, the seas may have been much shallower, or just maybe these islands were connected, but since that millennium, these species had time deleoped/diverged into 2 separate species.
But in modern times, this this outward colonization seems not to be the case.
I live on an island only 10 miles off the coast of Panama where on the mainland, there is a host of many cichlid species, including Vieja maculicuada, yet there are no cichlids at all on this island (Taboga).
If tetracanathus was able to tolerate sea water for even short periods, don't you think they would have colonized other nearby Caribbean islands? Wouldn't there be a population on say.... Puerto Rico for example.
The island of Hispaniola is close, yet the endemic cichlid there is Nandopsis haitiensus.
It may be that when the ancient tetrancanthus/haitiensus ancestor Nandopsis (Cichlasoma) woodringi migrated, it had the ability to cross long stretches of sea a few million years ago, the seas may have been much shallower, or just maybe these islands were connected, but since that millennium, these species had time deleoped/diverged into 2 separate species.
But in modern times, this this outward colonization seems not to be the case.
I live on an island only 10 miles off the coast of Panama where on the mainland, there is a host of many cichlid species, including Vieja maculicuada, yet there are no cichlids at all on this island (Taboga).
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I find reason to doubt that Nandopsis would have colonized to puerto rico despite it's seeming salt tolerance, a freshwater fish simply does not have the behavioral toolkit to survive the perilous journey, not when faced with threats such as cetaceans and elasmobranchs. The salt tolerance to me seems like an adaptation to salt intrusions into riverine enviroments.
