I've been reading up about the use of shoaling fish in a large tank to make cichlids more at ease - the idea being that many shoaling species won't fear Humans, and the cichlid sees that the owner isn't anything to worry about and therefore becomes more at ease with it's surroundings.
Has anyone had any experiance with using dither fish with the hyper-aggressive species such as Convicts or Acara?

I was thinking of perhaps adding Pearl, Zebra or Leopard Danios once I've got my 4ft tank setup for my convict pair as they are very shy, but I don't want the dither fish to end up as "target" fish.

Cheers

As with all Cichlids any companion fish must be bigger than half the expected growth size of your fish, in your convicts case companions need to be in excess of 3 - 4 inches. Anything under that will be seen as food and eagerly get eaten when you're not looking. For example my baby 3" Jaguar ate another of his sibling baby Jaguars who measured 2". Most Cichlids have extensible jaws, this means they can open their mouths really wide, it looks like they are yawning, and this enables them to be able to get things in that look too big. Danios wont present much of a challenge in that case. I would not advocate dither fish unless you have a tank big enough for the shoal to get right away from the cichlids, around a minimum of 6 foot for convicts but you will still loose some of the smaller fish.

Cheers Jag, I thought 4ft would be pushing my luck, thanks for the warning that even a 6ft would be!

The article I read didn't say much about how likely it was that the cichlids would eat the other fish, so I thought it best to check here first. I didn't realise that they could eat fish so large, I just thought they would harass them to death if problems occured!

If you decide to get some other fish for the tank of comparable size to the convicts, you will have to be careful that there addition does not have the reverse effect of making the convicts more elusive. I would personally work on gaining the trust of the fish by spending time with them with my hands in the water gently cleaning around them and maybe offering some nice juicy morsel like a fresh prawn from my fingers so they have to come out and get it. This way they should eventually realise that my presence is a good thing. The order of the day here is patience, and plenty of it. I don't think anybody on this site would advocate the use of smaller fish as bait to entice the shy fish out into the open, as this can just bolster their aggression and still not solve the problem.

Dither fish can be useful to reassure young cichlids and dwarf cichlids, but when they grow dithers can become food.
Or worse still, if you have a pair or a pair forms before you notice the cichlids will often have no worries about killing anything they percieve to be a threat to their territory.

Patience is the key.

i have a set up of:

4 convict julies
2 lamp ocellactus
2 neolamp cylindricus
4 synodontis multipunctata

and it wasn't untill i introduced 4 leptosoma that my tank became calm julies are still in control but not as aggresive and don't bother the leptosoma, ocellatus or the syno's tend to only get annoyed with each other or the cylindricus. letting nature take its course as idon't want to brake up my pair so if some fish die in the process so be it i know i'll be out of pocket but in the long run i think it's best.