I would like to ask everyone when it comes to cichlids, do you prefer African or American, and why????


I personally think that even though there are some awesome colors in Africans, Americans have the best personality and best interaction. Africans seem to swim around in large community tank trying to eat all day, and that it might as well be some aggressive over sized tetras in my opinion!! (well, some Africans, maybe not all!)

Well I have never kept African cichlids before so I can't really say which I prefer. However, I have no wish to keep Africans whatsoever. Lots of the African species require a more critical water conditions than their South American counterpart. My particular water chemistry suit the fish I keep which is another reason I would never go into keeping African cichlids. And of course, nothing beats the Oscar, I love my other fish, but they don't come close to what my O possesses in personality, so to speak.

this is actually quite an interesting topic and im sure you are going to get many varied responses to it.
im my case i do keep both african and new world cichlids and i personally do have a preference. for me new world cichlids are leaps and bounds better. they are more personable and entertaining than most of there african counterparts. on the other hand it can be hard at times to justify the large tanks and filtration needed to house a community of new world cichlids. i guess if you only have one or two you dont need a big tank but as most of us know one leads to two, leads to three and so on.
i find most african have beautiful colouration however they are extremly skitish but you can cram a bucket load of them into a relatively small tank which makes viewing them most enjoyable.
so i guess for me if i had to pick one it would be the new world cichlids over the africans. oscars are what got me started in cichlids and im sure i will alway have one but there are so many different species out there it would be extremly difficult to only pick one favorite.

New World for sure. Africans have alot of color but i like New World for the fact of size and personality.

I have had both, and I would say American Cichlids hands down. Atleast for me, because of the size and personality. African cichlids are very beautiful and have bright colors, but on the personality scale... maybe just a hair above gold fish.

I can't pick, so I keep LOTS of both! LOL

lol, i am glad to have a good response to this. @necro i feel how u do. great colors, but its almost as if american cichlids have the capacity to interact with humans better, and africans just swim around and wait to get fed. I love my babies, my RD is digging holes as we speak, what a crazy boy, lol. My Os are the ones that made me love cichlids too, LOVE the personality too! Pouting and all!

I like American Cichlids better, simply because the Africans are just too aggressive for my liking. Plus they all look the same to me lol just different colors.

africans are more aggressive? I thought that americans were...I dunno. I thought that if you could put a whole lot of something in a tank and they dont kill eachother that made them less aggressive than with americans who really cant be put around too many other fish without fighting. I see africans in tanks, and they are in a community, most americans cant do that, unless you have the gallons to handle it.

Dont get me wrong I love Oscars but American cichlids dont come close to African cichlids for beauty iv only just sold my colony of F1 blue zaire frontosa they where really something special to look at and still had tons of character they behaved like a family it was almost like a soap opra to watch them LOL.

only issue was just a pain in the ass to look after and there was allways falling outs between the alpha male and the secondary alpha male. this then involved removing the secondary male for a few days.

But now its all about the Oscars they are a better fish for fun and fairly hardy

These are blue Zaire frontosa check that colour




now do you see what i mean?

I have tried Africans but found them too aggressive, they spent most of there time chasing each other )))) much prefer the oscar,