INTRODUCTION TO CICHLID PROFILES
 

Pardon me for shouting, as I wish to belatedly and formally introduce my thumbnail encyclopedia of New World (and a few oddball) Cichlids. I hope to have it finished by the end of 2013. It is a product of my 55 years of experience as a hobbyist and yellowing notes, 10 years of university and graduate training as a lower vertebrate taxonomist and evolutionary ecologist, the development of my post-graduate interest in ethology and behavior, and the inspiration of the late George Barlow who gave New World cichlids the personality and evolutionary importance they richly deserved. I have tried to make the profiles easy to read but valuable to hobbyists and professionals alike. I have included the important meristic and mensural data, but have concentrated on color, personality, habitat, behavior, biotopes and life in the aquarium. I have updated a lot of old information about our New World friends. (I will not cover the cichlids of Africa, as Ad Konings has done this so remarkably well.) Please feel free to be interactive and contribute replies with any information or personal experiences you have had with these subjects of nature's grand experiment in evolution.