Emperor cichlid

Care at a glance

Overview

This is the largest cichlid in the world, a public-aquarium animal in private terms: the juvenile looks manageable, but an adult grows to the size of a large predator and needs pond-scale volume. Keep it alone or, at most, with a matched partner, never in a group, and never with anything small enough to be eaten. It cruises open water and hunts fish, so any tankmate must be large, tough and genuinely expendable to the risk. Feed meaty foods and large sinking items as it grows. Realistically an adult needs thousands of liters, at least 2000 and far more in practice, so think very hard before buying the charming juvenile.

In the wild

Boulengerochromis microlepis lives along the open shorelines and over the shallow shelves of Lake Tanganyika, a roaming, fish-eating giant. No home tank truly recreates its habitat; it needs enormous volume, open water and hard, alkaline chemistry to match the lake, around 24 to 27 C at a pH from 7.8 to 9. Strong filtration and pristine water are essential for a fish that grows this large and eats this much.

Good to know

A member of the family Cichlidae, this is the biggest cichlid on Earth, with males reaching about 80 centimeters and several kilograms. It is a biparental substrate spawner, and a pair may guard tens of thousands of fry. There is essentially no record of it breeding in home aquaria, both because of its size and because it appears to be semelparous, spawning once and then dying.

Did you know

The largest cichlid alive seems to gamble everything on one brood: a pair spawns, guards a vast cloud of young until it disperses, and then the parents are thought to die, spent by the effort.

Common questions

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