I'd love a pair of Oscars, I've wanted them for almost as long as I've owned fish! But a small house and relatively small, albeit increasing, fish budget don't mix well with their needs

My mind always goes back to trying to work out how to keep Convicts without them burrying me with their young. I presume split tanks wouldn't be a possibility as they could spawn through mesh and it would reduce the swimming area considerably. I've thought of solo Convicts, but when I tried that they sulked - although, as I said, that could have been the poor tank size and placement.

Can you really keep a pair of Firemouths on their own? I was under the impression that you needed a harem, but that's probably some rubbish a shop told me!
Apistogramma are very handsome fish, I looked at the ones from the owner you got your eunotus from and they would have been tempting if they weren't softwater fish.

You can keep a mated pair of Firemouths, yes, but the LFS may have been referring to getting a pair in the first place. Unless you can find someone selling an adult pair you'd have to start with a group of juveniles and wait for them to pair up, selling on the excess - as with most of the more intelligent CIchlids they like to choose their own mate, will pair for life and become aggressive to others in the tank once paired.

They do like the water fairly soft. What is your actual hardness, as the profile only lets you enter a range? You'd need to get the pH down for them too, but a mix of RO and tapwater might do the trick.

They are likely to breed though.

About the best solution given your tank size and water is the Rainbow Cichlid. You coud keep a pair in that tank and the pH wouldn't have to come down by a lot. They could deal with the hardness too, but will breed.

Trying to find a Cichlid that suits water parameters close to yours, is small enough for the tank, not too aggressive, owner friendly and won't breed is probably asking for the impossible really

Whilst (re)reading RO and remineralising, I realised that I would then struggle to re-home young considering I wouldn't be happy giving them to a LFS - I know most would scoff at any assertions that they wouldn't "adjust" to hard water. I think that when I go to my favourite LFS to check the price of RO I'll also have to ask what their policy is on rehoming softwater fish

The Rainbow looks lovely, is a 2' really big enough? Doesn't seem big enough for a comfortable terratory considering their shy nature. If it is big enough, I have both a 2' and 2.5' sitting empty as they're not suitable for my Danios or Goldies.

I need to order some gH and kH kits, I only checked one (GH - 244 [13.859dH]) and I think that might have been with a dipstick

Yes, for just one pair, but bear in mind a lot of the other suggestions I've made are for the tank in your first post: 100cm/160 litre.

I'll make sure I keep that in mind

I've ordered a gH and kH testing kit from API which should let me know how difficult it would be to change my water parameters.

My housemate wants Apistogramma eremnopyge as they're "tweeny"

and I've just remembered to look up Geophagus'....

One other thing, to help with my mental shortlist; I was told a while back (I'm not sure if it was on here or not) that destorying the eggs of my Convicts would stress out the female as it would cause the male to try and get her to lay again before she was ready - is this true, and would it still apply to other cichlids (such as firemouths)?

I'm kind of eager to get my gH and kH testing kits so that I can figure out what levels I can get to with RO without having to re-mineralise, that is if I have understood it correctly

It's not a good idea to be constantly removing eggs from aggressive cichlids IMO. Apart from the risk to you when removing them and distress to the fish, removing eggs will just result in a repeat spawn that much quicker and wearing out the female, or possiby in the male pushing for another spawn when the female isn't ready and harming her. Often, if you choose a mouthbrooder you'll have to remove the young from her mouth....you may not catch the eggs early enough to get them out.

Limiting the number of fry is best done, awful as it sounds, by leaving them with the parents. The parents will care for theminitially, but as they start to grow the parents will increasingly get annoyed with them and be ready to spawn agin. A lot of the first batch will be killed and eaten by the parents, but the odd one or two may still survive.

To be absolutely honest, and this is just my opinion, I really don't think this is the right time for you to be considering these fish. You're wanting to make too many compromises and the specification you've set for the fish just isn't possible.

I don't think there's really any more I can do to help you on this.

See, this is why I don't do cichlids I'd have to make too many compromises and that's no fun for the fish or for me because it means more work in the long run

Let us know what your GH and KH are, there's not much point planning anything until you know exactly what's going on with your water.

I don't think I'm coming across right in this thread
I'm not against them breeding, but I'd rather avoid having young I can't rehome if I can avoid it so I'd like to make sure that (a) there is no way of reducing the amount of fry I get (b) that I have a LFS that is capable of taking them (c) that I actually gain some experience by helping the parents bring up the young, as opposed to Convicts where they're so caring I have very little input.

As for the water, I am willing to go down the RO and re-mineralising route, but if I can avoid it then it will be easier for me to keep them and rehome them, plus it will be easier to avoid mess-ups (say for example they need a water change for some reason, and I haven't got enough RO and the LFS is shut).

I'm not going to rush into this, for starters my 90L tank isn't ready (no lid, filter etc) and I'd rather something bigger anyway - but if you really think I'm better looking elsewhere, then I can take that, although I might sulk