Expert: Chris Robbins - 7/10/2009

Question
Hello! I purchased our 1st fish about 6 months ago for our 10 gallon fish tank. I am from a very small town, and our pet shop (which has closed since then) sold me 5 fish. The only fish left from that purchase is "jewel" obviously she's a jewel fish. I have no clue as to what kind of fish the other 4 were, other than that they were all cichlids. My daughter who is 4 picked them out; 2 were purple and the other 2 yellow.
Last week, we went to the nearest fish store and bought 2 pink parrot fish. (Again because of the color) we had 2 fish die in less than 2 days, leaving only jewel.
The lady working in the store told us that since the parrot's were aggressive like jewel they should be fine.
Well they're not fine. Jewel has killed one of the pink parrots already and is now after the other one.
My question to you is, should we start over and trade the jewel and the parrot in for some non-agressive fish? Because we have now realized that jewel has possibly killed the other fish as well. Since their signs and symptoms are similar to  the last 2 fish that have died.
Let me know what the right direction is in your opinion! All I know is that I'm tired of flushing my money down the toilet!!!

Answer
Hi Deena;

It sounds like you have a "jewel cichlid". They are very aggressive and territorial. It is just fine alone in the ten gallon but you can't have any more fish in there with it...ever. If you want a community tank you could start a new larger tank of 20 gallons and just keep the ten for "Jewel". Ten gallon tanks are pretty small to have more than just 8 or 10 small fish that grow to no larger than 1.5 inches as adults.  

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins