A few questions

Hi guys

I have a few questions regarding my recent purchases. On Monday I bought two pieces of drift wood and 3 firemouths at Petstop. I bought 2 more Firemouths on the way home in Witbank. Now for the questions.
1) At what size do firemouths reach maturity? Three of them are about 5cm long, the other two are +/- 3cm long. Since I only have a 3ft tank I don't think I'll be able to keep all 5 once they are fully grown. I plan on only keeping a pair in the tank. These will be the only fish in the tank.
2) The drift wood I bought changed the colour of my water, is there anything bad about it? I like the look of the "stained" water.
3) one of the firemouths looks like he/she scraped its nose this afternoon. Anything I can do about it?

Any advice will be much appreciated.
Thanks

 

Think a 3ft is too small for a pair. The stainig of water is tannins. Some say its very good for your fish. Waterchanges takes it away. And after some time it will stop leeching. If its mopani it will take atleast a month.

 

Firemouth can reach a maximum size of 15cm and the minimum tank size is 3 ft, but as you've said at the end of the day you only want to keep 1 pair. The aggression levels will become severe at a certain stage if you want to keep all 5 in a 3ft tank. The previous time I kept firemouths, they reached maturity at about 9 - 10cm in size, the male specifically became very aggresive towards other tank mates which was also south and central american cichlids. As @Ryno said teh coloring of your water is ue to teh leaching of tannins from the wood in your water and is harmless to your fish. With regular water changes your water will become clear over a period of time. On the scraping of the nose, monitor your fish for infections that can occur, if so you can go to your lfs and obtain some medicine to treat it but usualy it cures without any problems if it is not a severe wound.

 

Thanks for the reply's. I'll keep an eye on the aggerssion levels, I don't want the little guys to get bullied. At this moment everbody seem to be more interested in sifting thru substrate for a tasty morsel. The nose is already looking better, I didn't do anything to the fish or the water execept my 10% water change every other day