Loaches Online Forum

Now one of my LFS has Blood Parrot Cichlids with larger 5-6" Clowns and they seem fine. Since my wife wants some Blood Parrots, I was thinking of setting up a tank with Clowns, Discus and Large Clowns. I know Discus are jumpy but these have been living with the Clown for over six months. I gues I am more worried about the Discus with the Cichlids. So I shouldve put this on the other forum. Any suggestions?

I don't have any experience that would back up any statement I would make, but I think I can safely say that if you went into a discus forum and asked this question you'd get a lot of "absolutely not" 's.

Thanks TammyLiz I think your right, after watching the Blood Parrots in the quarentine tank and noticing how all the otherwise healthy new Clowns have frayed tail fins. I think the Parrots will go with the other Cichlids. My wife thought it would be cool because the display aquarium at a LFS has various Cichlids with Clowns.

Blood Parrots like similar water conditions to Clowns, that being soft water, slightly acidic. But the two IMO do not fair well together at all. The reasons are these; Blood Parrots cannot use their mouths to bite but they use there body mass to push, shove and ram other fish. They are territorial with their tank upon maturity and will do best with small, fast dither fish. Rosey Barbs work well for me. Parrots also do not do well with other Cichlids, they have no real defense system and will be shredded. Discus and them!!!!!! The visual I get from adult, slow moving, quiet fish with rammy, fast moving Parrots is not pretty!

The other factor about loaches of any kind and them are that Parrots have large, open gill plates, Loaches love to investigate all nooks and crannies. Not good at all for the Parrots.

When my Parrots were small I tried them with a few smaller clowns and it did not work out at all for either of them. Currently I keep 3 of them in a 75 gallon with 5 Rosey Barbs and 3 large brown spotted Cories. And they do need a larger tank!! You would not believe how big they get. LFS told me that 3 in a 45 gallon would be fine their entire life. LOL forgot to do my own homework first. The truth is that they grow their entire lives and live a longtime. They are about as big around as they are long, they need lots of space and extra filtration.

Best of luck to you with them. They are great fish, very interesting personalities.

OK one more question before I give up this idea. What if the Clowns are bigger than the Parrots? The Clowns are 5-6 inches and Parrots are 3-4 inches. No Discus....

IMHO size has very little to do with compatibility, it's all of the other issues that were mentioned.

Another factor that I failed to mention was that because of their mouth structure they eat slowly, some need to be hand fed, unable to eat pellets. Floating Cichlid pellets, even soaked are difficult for most of them. 2 of mine eat well, sinking shrimp pellets, sinking Parrot pellets, flake and frozen blood worms, 1 cannot eat pellets, can eat flake if given enough time (hand feed her most of the time) I give them approx. 30 minutes to eat, with the filtration turned off. Loaches gobble up their food, which would leave the Parrots hungry (Parrots require vast amounts of food also).

If there are no other alternatives for you, based on the information provided, observation of the formentioned should help you in deciding whether it's working for you or not.

Wishing you the best.

Looks like they are getting there own tank with a couple of Paradise fish and Synos.