Convict shape shifting

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Hybridfish7

Hybridfish7

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Dec 4, 2017
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My male rio bagaces, around the time I got him last year:
1647315648419.png
And then him today, after living in a tub and fighting a powerhead for around 6 months
1647315704197.png
Extremely hard to believe it's the same fish, there any way I can get him chunky again?
 
Hybridfish7 said:
My male rio bagaces, around the time I got him last year:
View attachment 1490272
And then him today, after living in a tub and fighting a powerhead for around 6 months
View attachment 1490273
Extremely hard to believe it's the same fish, there any way I can get him chunky again?
Click to expand...
Remove the powerhead for lower flow. He’s probably having to burn a lot more calories swimming against the flow.
 
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He has been off the powerhead for around 3 months now
 
I don't think he lost much wait because it looks like he grew in length.
Is he still the boss in the tank? Are there other fish to boss around? If not he might just have reduced water in his head because he doesn't need to show anymore that he is the boss.

And he looks fine now. Not too thin or so
 
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He is indeed a bit longer, however there are no other fish in the tank other than his mate. It was like that for a couple months in the tub too. He was originally with Buenos Aires but kept chasing them out of the tank.
 
The nuchal hump is a dominance trait and they usually have bigger ones if there are other subdominant males to bully. Yours may have lost it due to not having anyone else to challenge him, in addition to losing a bit of overall body mass due to the strong flow (lots of exercise). One thing you could try is to tape a small mirror to the tank for a few minutes each day so he will think there are other males in the area.
 
Although I ended up working as a water microbiologist/chemist
A major part of my studies were related to how changes in environment affect organisms.
And since as an aquarist cichlids were my thing, I experimented with my own.
Cichlids easily change color, shape, and even will adapt bone structure to fit current, color of substrate, structure of habitat, surrounding plant life, with or without a member of the opposite sex around etc etc
I did an experiment with a male haitiensus, placing it in different color and structured habitats.
Below its normal tank setup.
Bslow, I placed it in a mono-color container for an extended period (about a month).
https://hosting.photobucket.com/alb...ehait007-1.jpg?width=450&height=278&crop=fill
Below a female haitiensus with a male in the tank
Below when I removed the male from her tank
Also did the same with festae
!st a female festae without a male in the tank
Below, the same female festae, when the mail was placed back in her tank
Below is a quite revealing true scientific study.

How cichlids adapt to changing environmental conditions

I dropped this link in another post, but believe it to be important enough to get its own PDFRapid morphological change in multiple cichlid ecotypes.pdf
www.monsterfishkeepers.com www.monsterfishkeepers.com
 
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So...is the goal to return him to a fat, overweight state? I'm sure that can be done with careful overfeeding...but why would you want to? He looks great now. :)

Wait...is this a trick question?
 
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