To Petro, or not to Petro? This is the question!

[Chris Derrick]

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas to you all. I have a 125 gallon tank with Wet dry, and Fx5 two emp 400 and housing 40 wild caught Ikola Tropheus that are breeding with females holding now! My question for you all is can I toss a few Petro's in the mix or will it mess the whole thing up like the time I added Chilanga and Ikola together and breeding stopped? I just got a bug and really not interested in purchasing another tank. If and when I do another tank it will be large with Petro only species but this is a way down the road. If I can add them would you put smaller ones in say 3 inch or put full wild caught grown Petro's in the tank? Thanks Chris Derrick

[myjohnson]

I repeat what I told you in PM. It can work but breeding is going to suck for your tropheus.

[76dragon]

Don't do it

[armthehomeless]

If your intention for the fish is to breed them, then don't do it. If you don't care about breeding, go for it. I have a single Petro in with a bunch of cyprichromis that were breeding fairly regularly. I never really planned to doing anything with the fry, so the fact that they stopped breeding when I added the petro didn't bother me.

[supadave]

Correct me if I'm wrong..but didn't you have a couple of threads where you were wanting to get your Ikolas back to breeding? I remember reading that you finally got them breeding again. So why do you want to do something that may interrupt the breeding again? I don't know if adding the Petros will or will not interrupt breeding... but why take that chance.

[Chris Derrick]

Dave this is true! I guess I was hoping you guys would say hell yeh go for it it always works lol. I will leave them be and work towards a nice 200+ gallon tank in future for petro's! Thanks all!

[myjohnson]

Nothing is written in stone. I got 5 polli to breed in a 75g tank with a big moshi.

I don't recommend it but if you really really want to then you can always just try and report back your findings.

[russ]

my ilangi breed good in a 135 with a 10 inch longola
i also have 11 moshi at 2inches and 4 3 inch simo diagramma

[tbui1178]

I had about 8 petros with my red rainbows never did breed. Now that I took them out, breeding finally started and I have a couple holding right now.

As stated above, if you don't care about breeding, then go for it! If you do, don't do it.

[cichlid1409]

i think 1 or 2 petros would be ok but if you want to keep a colony of both in the same tank most likely the trophs wont breed.

[Cesar]

I've got 31 Lufubu in with 13 petros (3-4"), still see fry but probably not as much as I should be getting.

[Chris Derrick]

Yeh I didnt take everyone's advice on adding my chilanga to my ikola in same tank and well it turned out to be a mess. There was no mix breeding but the fish just didn't act the same and the breeding did stop for 6 months untill I sold the chilanga. I got a good group I should let them be and think about doing Petro tank in future. CD