Little Reasons To Smile

You want a showpiece fish with colour, a little character but not too unruly? You need dwarf acaras in your tank...

- Nathan Hill

The perfect show fish for a small community tank is apparently a big ask. Contenders for the role need to be dinky — in the sub-10cm region — as well as peaceful. That’s a rocky start right there. On top of that, they need to be colourful, and prepared to show themselves off. Ideally they’ll have character, not just mindlessly shambling about like underwater zombies.

The thing is, we’ve had some near perfect fish for about a century. They’re the dwarf acaras of South America, and it’s high time they fell back into favour. Between the handful of different species, there’s something for everyone, from the frivolous newcomer looking for colour, to the devoted breeder looking for a rarity to covet.

Clarifying what makes a dwarf acara is a little tricky, but you can scale my definition up or down a tad to suit your own needs. Dwarf cichlids in general are fish under 10cm, though some aquarists plump for around 12cm as the cut offpoint. Defining ‘acara’ is trickier again, as acará (note the accent) is a word from the indigenous South American Guarani language, used to describe cichlids.

In the olden days, Acara was a valid genus. But over time, fish are redescribed, taxonomic understanding increases, and old nomenclature is abandoned. What we’re left with is a vestigial word hangover, and a catch all moniker for what once was. This isn’t unique to cichlids, by any means, and has happened all over the place. It’s the reason we call certain livebearers Mollies (once they were named Mollenesia), Platies (they were called Platypoecilia), and even why tetras are called tetras — once upon a time, many of them were banded under the catch all of Tetragonopterus. Fish names can be such fun, except when they’re not…