Cichlid Growth & Evolution Discussion

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One of the interesting things I found is that many fish will experience a "growth spurt" when the food is re-introduced after being "starved" for some time... it's called "compensatory growth".

i.e:

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well OBVIOUSLY it reflects their natural environment... that's basically the whole point of evolution, it's the simplest answer you can get and it's true for every living organism on Earth. the question is why? what differences in the environment make certain fish grow faster/slower/bigger/smaller and what purpose does it serve? Why Oscar grow 1.5" a month and festae barely grow 1/4" if you're lucky? I think that's what the OP meant.
 
That's what I meant. Why does a Midas need to grow 1" a month? And a Festae's enviroment lets it get by with barely .5" per month? One of the main things I'm hearing is that food plays a big part. The food selection that's been available to an Oscar for millions of years has given it a very fast metabolism and it eats eats eats and grows " ". Where's as a Festae's menu must be more limited and over time it's given it a very slow metabolism....well at least they don't produce an Oscar's waste :D
 
Most I've read about wild fish indicates that growth rate is dictated by water temperature, nutrition and pollution. These factors fluctuate from year to year and, in turn, growth rates fluctuate as well.
As for what makes on species grow faster than another, this is biodiversity. Variation is the precursor to evolution.
 
That article basically states that some fish need to have a slower growth rate because there's less resources available in their environment thus they need to be able to endure longer periods of "starvation" or food deprivation, whereas other fish can afford to grow several inches in little time and not worry about it, but this becomes a disadvantage when food becomes scarce. It also talks about population density, temperature, diet, etc.

Here's another one discussing the effects of crowding and food availability on fish growth:

Fry of the European and Chinese races of the common carp and interracial crossbred fry were grown together in a series of ponds for 28 days after hatching. The degree of crowding and the amount of available natural food were intentionally varied in these experimental ponds. This resulted in a large variation in mean growth between ponds, ranging from 0·1 to 5·2 g per fish during the 28 days growth period. Under conditions of very slow growth, resulting from severe crowding and lack of natural food, fry of the Chinese carp grew several times faster than European carp. At lower densities and when natural food was more abundant, resulting in a faster rate of growth, this difference between the two races disappeared. Crossbred fry between the Chinese and European carp grew faster than either of their parents under all conditions tested.
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8649.1982.tb04714.x/abstract

Here's one discussing the effects of population density, competition and predation pressure on growth:

Growth of fishes is affected potentially by a number of biotic factors, including population density of the cohort and its potential competitors, food availability, and predation pressure (Fox and Flowers, 1990). The density of a fish population plays a predominant role in influencing the growth of the fish (Smith et al., 1978). Changes of population densities of fishes may lead to changes in growth and survival rate (Miao, 1992). Fish larvae grow slowly and have a low survival rate at high stocking density (Huang and Chiu, 1997). The density at which a fish species can be stocked is an important factor in determining the economic viability of a production system in intensive aquaculture (Papst et al., 1992). Both growth and survival of young brown trout Salmon truth were density-dependent and related to competition for food and space in a screened natural brook (Le Cren, 1965). Rubenstein (1981) also showed that the survival rate of Everglands pygmy sunfish Elassima evergladei was density-dependent. The caged dace in high density have death rates an order of magnitude higher than those in low density over the first 10-12 weeks post-hatching (Mills, 1982). It seems that growth and survival of fishes is widely held to be density-dependent. However, there were several studies reported density-independent effect on growth (Li and Ayles, 1981; Ross and Almeida, 1986; Martin and Wertheimer, 1989; Miao, 1990) and survival of fishes (Carlander and Payne, 1977; Li and Ayles, 1981; Martin and Wertheimer, 1989; Fox and Flowers, 1990; Cruz and Ridha, 1995).
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ntur.lib.ntu.edu.tw/bitstream/246246/161511/1/18.pdf
 
Calihawk said:
hehe, its not that simple because of dif. variations among the dif. species. But some things that will help ALL the dif. fishes with growing:

Powerfeed....not to where food is all on the ground, but rather 3-4 times a day.
Clean Water...no brainer here, less stress equals better health.

Last one is not proven, but notice babies sleep all the time, they say the more sleep the faster the growth. Perhaps only having the light on 8 hours a day
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Haha. My boy hardly sleeps and is ALWAYS active at only 2 yrs and growing like crazy. Shoot I wish he'd sleep more, That way I could do some dang WC more often. So no I gotta disagree with that last one dude...
 
I feed my cichlids 3 times a day,when I had the male Texas,he was 2 inches when I purchased him.Then before he died,he was close to 6 inches,out grew 4 of my other cichlids in less than a few months.
 
burzumaske20 said:
I feed my cichlids 3 times a day,when I had the male Texas,he was 2 inches when I purchased him.Then before he died,he was close to 6 inches,out grew 4 of my other cichlids in less than a few months.
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That is one of the dangers and/or sacrifice of growing too fast.

Also feeding your fish some food with a lot of fat content will make them grow faster too. Pellets from hatcheries that make Trouts and Salmons grow 3x faster than nature says one Hatchery worker. Very high in Fat content which is very bad for the liver, but lets say that if you stop feeding them these pellets around 2-3" may conserve their life. There was a thread on this before (lipid and its effect on liver, but makes fishes kept in same environment grow much faster).

Fat Fat Fat
 
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