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Oh I missed that part. Didn't read closely enough before responding. Another method I like to use for catching small fish is by using an appropriately sized divider that is easy to maneuver inside the tank, like light diffuser material, to corral the fish into one end or corner of the tank...

Lots of great info here already! My stance with these fish is that keeping them singly or in pairs is always best, even though community situations can work at times. And always make sure that the females have a place to escape to where the males cannot get to them at all, just in case.

Standard airline tubing, and siphon them into a small container of tank water. I did this with my rainbow cichlid fry because they were wiggling down into my eco complete substrate and I couldn't do much without risk of smashing them. Worked perfectly! Plus there is no net in the water to...

I left my entire group until a pair formed. Having a heavily stocked tank that didn't really have territories to establish worked fine for me. I would think as your stock decreases it would increase the odds of one fish getting singled out. My second pair formed at about 3 and 4 inches. A...

Female dovii are great! I've always kept them as pairs but to honest, the only times my males get crazy is during spawning. My big Female is actually less shy under most circumstances than my big male.

Flowerhorn (nuchal hump), Dempsey, and I believe the last is a leporinus but I've never kept them.

Also, use an appropriately sized piece of egg crate (light diffuser material) to corral them into smaller sections of the tank, along with a larger net. Makes netting them out far easier! They are definitely jumpers, so make sure they can't exit the confines of the tank!

Looks female to me also

Spots in the unpaired fins indicates male. Females will have clear fins with no spots.

Male, spots in the unpaired fins.

+1, try turning off the powerheads and see if that helps. Are they eating normally?

I have not kept geos but my larger cichlids move bdbs around by the ton and I've not had any issues. I also highly recommend lapis luster sand, I get it from home depot. It's been about a year, but at the time it was $9 per 50lb bag I believe. It's kiln dried so it comes very clean. It's a...

Sometimes fish can reach maturity much faster than you would expect. I had a pair form out of a batch of dovii growouts at 3 and 4 inches in size. I also bought 3 haitiensis at one inch, and then two of them formed a pair and spawned a batch of fry at 2.5 inches which I was not expecting.

Not if your using them as dithers for a baby female dovii... they worked great, until they didn't. And that was when she was still like 3 inches.

The way I see it, if you were to just call them vieja melanura with no claimed collection points, then they should just be considered hobby form fish. They are still the same species after all, and most hobbyists would love to have them unless they are really attempting to collect species from...

I use the spots above the lateral line as a secondary reference only. The unpaired fin spots are for sure, and if you see both then it's even more certain.

Yeah they formed the pair out of a group of growouts at a small size. I think the hormones of them wanting to spawn are a big factor in any fish achieving its best adult colors. They also started spawning at a very small size. My haitiensis surprised me as well. I just happened upon three 1...

I haven't found that to be true with mine. I've grown out dovii and haitiensis, and it always seems like a fairly even mix. But I've always had much larger numbers so it could just have been luck of the draw with only a group of six. Depending on where you got them, the larger specimens may...

Thanks!

Thanks man, pics truly don't do them justice. IMO a fully colored up dovii is near impossible to beat if you see them in person. They just have so much iridescence to them that is very hard to replicate in a picture.