Freshwater Fish · Cichlids
Electric Blue Acara
Andinoacara pulcher
The mild-mannered cichlid in electric blueBeginner
- Lifespan
- 8-10 years
- Size
- 12-15cm (5-6in)
- Social needs
- Singly or as a bonded pair; community-safe with medium fish
- Time
- Moderate
- Cost
- Medium
- Diet
- Omnivore (cichlid pellets, frozen and live foods)
Overview
What is this animal?
- The electric blue acara is a captive-bred colour form of the blue acara, a sturdy cichlid whose wild ancestors come from Trinidad and coastal Venezuela.
- Its defining trait is an all-over iridescent powder-blue shimmer that the wild-type fish only hints at, usually paired with a dusky forehead and a yellow-orange edge along the dorsal fin.
- The morph exists only in the aquarium trade, and its exact ancestry is debated but has never been proven, with many breeders believing ram genes were crossed in early on.
- At 12-15cm it towers over this guide's dwarf cichlids and roughly matches a discus in body length, yet it is comfortably the easiest cichlid here.
- It tolerates the ordinary temperatures and moderately hard tap water that would slowly kill a German blue ram, and it lacks the spawning-season temper of an angelfish.
- Expect 8-10 years from a well-kept fish, so treat it as a long-term commitment rather than an impulse buy.
Temperament
- This is the gentle exception among mid-sized cichlids, and that is exactly why it earns a beginner rating where the angelfish does not.
- An electric blue acara mostly ignores anything it cannot swallow, and even a pair guarding eggs only firmly pushes other fish away from its corner rather than hunting them down.
- It spends its day cruising and bulldozing sand rather than picking fights.
- Peaceful does not mean harmless, and the mouth is the measure.
- Neon-sized tetras and dwarf shrimp will eventually be eaten, so choose tankmates like black skirt tetras, larger rasboras, bronze corydoras, bristlenose plecos and medium rainbowfish.
- Keep one fish, or a proven pair, rather than several loose adults, because two unpaired acaras in a 55-gallon tank may bicker over the same patch of floor.
A good fit for
- First-time cichlid keepers with a 4ft tank
- Community tanks built around medium-sized fish
- Keepers who found rams or discus too fragile
- Aquarists wanting easy pair-and-spawn behaviour
- Anyone wanting cichlid personality without the temper
Common mistakes to avoid
- Tanks under 200L / 55 gallons
- Housing with neon-sized fish or dwarf shrimp
- Cheap line-bred stock with bent spines or short gill plates
- Hole-in-the-head from old water and monotonous food
- Rooted plants constantly dug up
- Two unpaired adults feuding over territory
Enclosure
Minimum 200 litres (53 US gallons)
Fine alone or with company. Singly or as a bonded pair; community-safe with medium fish
- Easy care does not mean a small tank, and this is where new keepers most often get it wrong.
- Provide at least 200L (55 US gallons) with a 4ft (120cm) footprint for one fish or a pair, because acaras are active swimmers that patrol the whole bottom half of the aquarium.
- Keep water at 22-27C (72-81F) with pH 6.5-8.0 and hardness anywhere up to about 18 dGH, and note that unlike rams or discus they genuinely do not need soft, acidic or very warm water.
- Use a sand substrate, because acaras dig constantly, taking mouthfuls and re-landscaping the floor, and coarse gravel can scrape their mouths.
- Anchor plants to wood and rock or keep them potted, since rooted stems will be dug up sooner or later.
- Add driftwood, a cave or two, and a few flat stones that a pair can adopt as spawning sites.
- Filter generously, as a meaty-fed 15cm cichlid produces far more waste than a shoal of tetras.
- The tank must be fully cycled before the fish arrives, with ammonia and nitrite at zero, and a 25-30% water change every week keeps nitrate down.
Supplies
Setup
- Tank and stand
- Filter
- Heater and thermometer
- Substrate, plants and decor
- Liquid test kit
- Dechlorinator and starter supplies
Ongoing
- Quality cichlid pellet sized to your species
- Tropical flake as a secondary staple
- Frozen bloodworm, brine shrimp and daphnia
- Spirulina or vegetable flake
- Live blackworms for conditioning (optional)
- Small thawing cup
- Turkey baster for target-feeding shy fish
- Fine net for removing leftovers
Safe substrate: Inert aquarium gravel · Fine, smooth sand · Aquasoil for planted tanks
Care routine
Daily
- Check temperature and equipment
- Feed
- Head-count and look everyone over
Weekly
- Frequent partial water changeevery 3 days
- Top up evaporationevery 3 days
- Check territories and pairing
- Clean glass and clear algae
- Test the water
Monthly
- Trim and thin the plantsevery 2 weeks
- Check supplies and reagent dates
- Rinse the filter media
Less often
- Replace chemical filter media (Carbon/Purigen)every 2 months
Vet: Quarterly water and territory review — every 3 months
Top resources for more info
Independent creators and organisations we would send a friend to. We have no affiliation with any of them, and nothing here is sponsored. Links checked 2026-09-19.
YouTubers
Girl Talks FishCare how-tos by fish type, tank setup and beginner mistakesAquarium Co-OpSpecies care guides, filtration and fish health (run by a retailer)Prime Time AquaticsSpecies profiles, stocking and water chemistry explained plainly
Sites
Go deeper
Diet
- Electric blue acaras are omnivores with a strong lean toward meaty foods.
- Build the diet around a quality sinking cichlid pellet, then rotate in frozen or live bloodworm, brine shrimp, krill and chopped earthworm two or three times a week.
- A little spirulina or blanched vegetable matter now and then rounds out the menu.
- Feed once or twice daily only what is eaten within a couple of minutes.
- They are enthusiastic, messy eaters that will beg convincingly, and overfeeding is the fastest route to fouled water in a cichlid tank.
- Varied, protein-rich feeding is also what keeps the electric blue shimmer bright rather than washed out.
Health
- The underlying blue acara is one of the toughest cichlids in the hobby, but the electric blue line is heavily line-bred and quality varies sharply between sources.
- Cheap batches can show bent spines, short gill covers and generally weaker constitutions, so inspect fish before buying and favour a breeder or shop that can say where its stock comes from.
- The main acquired problems are ich after stress or chilling, and hole-in-the-head disease, which in this species is strongly tied to old, nitrate-rich water and a monotonous diet, with the Hexamita parasite often implicated.
- Watch for pitting around the face and lateral line, faded colour, clamped fins and refusal of food.
- Quarantine newcomers for three to four weeks before adding them to the display.
- With clean water, varied food and honest tank space, a good-quality fish should sail past its fifth birthday without ever seeing medication.
Is your enclosure big enough?
Minimum volume200 litres (53 US gallons)
Swimming length122 cm minimum. A tall tank of the right volume is still the wrong shape.
CompanyFine alone or with company. Singly or as a bonded pair; community-safe with medium fish
Is this urgent?
In a fish tank the patient is usually the water. Test before you treat — dosing a healthy tank for a disease it does not have makes things worse.
Go now
Any detectable ammonia or nitrite in a stocked tankLarge water change now with dechlorinated, temperature-matched water. Stop feeding. Test again in 12 hours. Both are directly toxic. How toxic the ammonia reading is depends on pH and temperature, so the same number can be harmless or lethal.
NowFish gasping at the surface, or crowding the filter outflowIncrease surface agitation immediately, then test the water. Either the oxygen has crashed or the gills are being chemically burned. Both are hours-scale problems.
NowSudden deaths, more than one fish in a dayTest ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and temperature before doing anything else. Do not add medication yet. Multiple simultaneous deaths point at the water or the equipment, not at a pathogen.
NowToday
Flashing — repeatedly scraping against decor or substrateTest the water, then look closely for parasites. Irritation is either chemical or parasitic; the test tells you which before you medicate.
TodayWhite salt-grain spots over the body and finsBegin the appropriate treatment today and check the temperature. The parasite's life cycle is temperature-driven, and it multiplies with every cycle you wait.
TodaySoon
Clamped fins, hiding, or refusing food for more than two daysTest the water and review recent changes. Usually the earliest visible sign of a parameter drifting.
A few daysNever add a new fish to a tank that is not fully cycled, and never treat blind. A test kit is cheaper than the fish.
This is general guidance for a healthy adult, not a diagnosis. An exotics vet who knows your animal always overrides it — and the time to find one is before you need one.
What it really costs
Setup, monthly, first year and across a whole life, itemised and with the electricity worked out from the actual wattage. Published figures for the same animal disagree by a factor of four, so the calculator shows ranges rather than picking one.
Bedding and substrate
Substrate in an aquarium is a filter as much as a floor. Most of the biology lives in and on it.
Safe
Inert aquarium gravelRinse thoroughly before use. Grain size should be too large to swallow and too small to trap food.
safeFine, smooth sandCorrect for corydoras, kuhli loaches and anything that sifts. Their barbels wear away on sharp gravel.
safeAquasoil for planted tanksExcellent for plants, but it leaches ammonia for the first weeks. Cycle around it; do not stock into it.
safeBare bottomLegitimate for quarantine and grow-out tanks. Easy to clean, but it holds far less biological filtration.
safeWith a caveat
Crushed coral or aragoniteDeliberately raises hardness and pH. Correct for rift-lake cichlids, wrong for soft-water species.
with a caveatVery deep sand bedsAnaerobic pockets form below about 5 cm in still sand. Either keep it shallow or keep it stirred.
with a caveatPainted or coated gravelUsually fine, but coatings chip. Test a handful in a jar for a week first.
with a caveatNever
Sharp or angular gravel with bottom-dwellersWears down barbels and leads to infection in corydoras and loaches.
neverAnything containing metal, limestone of unknown origin, or shells in a soft-water tankSlowly alters chemistry in ways that are hard to diagnose later.
neverThis is our general list for freshwater fish. We have not built one specific to Cichlids yet.
My kit says 0.25 ppm. Is that dangerous?
A liquid kit measures total ammonia, but only the un-ionised fraction is really toxic, and that fraction is governed by pH and temperature — each whole pH unit multiplies it roughly tenfold. So the same reading can be nearly harmless in one tank and lethal in another; this works out which one you are in.
Compare with other animals
The same axes for every animal, side by side — the way the guides are written makes that a fair comparison rather than two articles.
Keep going
Cichlids, side by side
Same axes, same care guides — the honest way to choose between types.
See all Cichlids side by side →
