Chancho midas cichlid

Care at a glance

Overview

This is a big, aggressive Central American cichlid for specialist keepers, and it is best kept singly or as a single breeding pair with no other cichlids sharing its space. It works the lower half of the tank, digging and rearranging the bottom, and it will not tolerate rivals, so choose tankmates with great care or keep none at all. Feed a varied diet of sinking pellets, meaty frozen foods, and some vegetable matter. It reaches close to 30 centimeters, so plan on a long, heavy tank of at least 500 liters with rock and sturdy decor that a determined digger cannot topple.

In the wild

Amphilophus chancho lives in just one place: the clear water of Lake Apoyo, a flooded volcanic crater in Nicaragua. The lake is warm and slightly hard and alkaline, so keep the tank between about 24 and 29 C with a pH of 7 to 8.2. Give it a floor of sand, some large rounded stones and rocky cover to break up lines of sight, and open swimming space, since this is an active fish that patrols and excavates its patch of the bottom.

Good to know

Amphilophus chancho is one of the larger members of the Midas cichlid complex, in the family Cichlidae, reaching around 29 centimeters. Chancho is Spanish for pig, a nod to its bulk. It is a substrate-spawning, biparental cichlid: a pair cleans a site, guards the eggs, and both parents defend the fry for weeks. It is assessed as critically endangered, restricted to a single small crater lake.

Did you know

Lake Apoyo is a young lake, only about twenty thousand years old, yet it has already produced its own small flock of six closely related Amphilophus cichlids from a single founding ancestor. This one is among the largest of them.

Common questions

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