The Jack Dempsey is a Central American cichlid that was named after the great boxer of the same name. If you hadn't already deduced, this is a fighting fish. I had one, myself, named Elton. Here is his tale...
This was one of the very first cichlids that my brother got (he started before me). It was evident that Elton wasn't very social, as only Ellen was able to survive with him (and for a very short period of time). When he brought Elton home, he was living in a 5 gallon tank, as that was all that we had to keep him by himself. He had his "binky", a little fake coral reef to hide in. He lived here for a few months. When we first got Satan, we had him in a 1 gallon tank to hold him over until our bigger tank. We put this mini tank next to Eltons. These 2 fish stared at each other ceaselessly through the glass panes. They wanted each other...dead!
Well, not too long after that we had to get Elton his new tank so he would have more room. He was still a loner. We decided to get some live food for our fish. He got some minnows...a dozen of them. Why we put all of them in at the same time, I don't remember. But it was an all-out slaughter. Elton hid at first, but when he got sick of them, he swam out, grabbed a minnow, thrashed violently until it was dead, and let it drop.
The next morning, his water was super-mega-humongo cloudy with decay, and the room smelled like a full fledged fish market. We cleaned out the tank with a 50% water change, but we couldn't do much more. The tank never really recovered pure water after that.
But this proved that Elton was a survivor. He actually flourished in brackish water, preferring it to pure water.
In his last year, I'd say, he developed a very weird habit. He'd often lay on the bottom of the tank (as seen in one of the pics below), but he'd "hulk up" like Hulk Hogan, and have a huge spurt of energy. Out of nowhere he'd burst about the tank, whacking himself into the walls. In less than a minute, he'd finish. It was very odd.
He was never my favorite fish. He couldn't be in a tank with anyone (even though we were tempted to put him in Satan's tank at times...), and he never really did anything. And he was a great survivor. That fish was ancient! He was 3-3.5 years old when he died. That is very old for a cichlid. Ellen has broken his record (and still going), but he was very old.
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