pandemic

For the last few years I've been raising and breeding African cichlids.

Started with a 5 gallon tank and know I have a 10, 20, 25, 75 gallon and I'm negotiating the purchase of a 55 gallon long.
I don't know what it is about cichlids, but every time I go to the LFS I want to start a new tank. Coral and marine tanks interest me, but I don't think it would be as therapeutic with the amount of maintenance that is involved.

I recently began breeding South American convict cichlids.

These little buggers are vicious. I had to create a tank just for the mating pair. During breeding, they will defend the eggs/fry to the death, sometimes taking on fish 3x their size. Once the pair has mated, I'll have about 150-200 fry in the tank.

So to make things interesting and hopefully help with population control, I added the rubber lip plecostomus to both the mating tanks.

These are shy little algae eaters. I'm hoping they have enough speed to avoid the grasp of the dominant male of the 75 gallon.

As with all cichlid tanks, there are territories and I'm hoping they will just ignore the rubber lips. I'm being optimistic, but I'm guessing both will be gone in less than a week.
As for the convict tank, they are evasive enough to hide in the plants successfully, but once they mess with the fry, the male will kill it. I'll just wait and see how it plays out.