Dicrossus foirni progress

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ryansmith83

ryansmith83

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May 2, 2008
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A couple months ago I received five Dicrossus foirni. Here's my first thread for earlier pics/video. They are still tiny, but not as tiny as when I received them, and their colors are starting to come in. They are hard to spot in the video but the largest fish is getting a nice maroon dorsal fin and the rest all have blue and red anal and ventral fins now. I'm guessing the largest fish is a male because his checkerboard pattern often fades and leaves that one dark blotch at the front of the dorsal -- this is supposedly a characteristic of males.

Apologies for the jerky video -- hard to follow such tiny, fast-moving fish. My iPhone could barely keep focus on them!

[video=youtube_share;Hw4ekiEbh6A]http://youtu.be/Hw4ekiEbh6A[/video]
 
[video=youtube_share;DUDl60xFwXo]http://youtu.be/DUDl60xFwXo[/video]

I love that they're chunkier than the D. filamentosus which tend to be much more slender and elongated. They're finally large enough now to take the 1mm NLS pellets. When I first got them they couldn't even fit the 1mm pellets in their mouths. :ROFL:
 
abarilot said:
Little cuties!! They seem pretty mellow towards each other, are they?
Click to expand...

Not really! They are alone in a 55 gallon and they really only interact in a group at feeding time. If they get too close to each other, there's a lot of pecking and tail-slapping. They have very specific schedules. I leave my fishroom lights on almost 24/7 but from about 11pm to 7am I never see them. You'd think I had an empty tank. They all tuck away into their own spots and bed down for the night. Once sunlight hits the tank they're begging for food (I took the videos this morning before and during feeding time, which is why they're so active) and swimming around. I try to scatter the food as much as I can because they like to stay in their own designated territories when eating. Any overlapping causes chasing and nipping.

Part of me wants to try some little tetras and dwarf bristlenose to clean the driftwood, but they should be spawning age in another 3 - 5 months and then I'd be trying to remove them all again to get the foirni to spawn.
 
Maybe not go for the BN but I don't see the harm in getting some small tetras as dithers for the time being. At least your tank would be more active for the next 3-5months. Good luck with them!
 
I like how they are thicker as well, more like D. maculatus than D. filamentosus. This may sound odd coming from a pike cichlid fan, but I find the D. filamentosus just too elongate to look cichlidy.

Nice update. Can't wait until that male dorsal colors in.
 
ryansmith83 said:
Not really! They are alone in a 55 gallon and they really only interact in a group at feeding time. If they get too close to each other, there's a lot of pecking and tail-slapping. They have very specific schedules. I leave my fishroom lights on almost 24/7 but from about 11pm to 7am I never see them. You'd think I had an empty tank. They all tuck away into their own spots and bed down for the night. Once sunlight hits the tank they're begging for food (I took the videos this morning before and during feeding time, which is why they're so active) and swimming around. I try to scatter the food as much as I can because they like to stay in their own designated territories when eating. Any overlapping causes chasing and nipping.

Part of me wants to try some little tetras and dwarf bristlenose to clean the driftwood, but they should be spawning age in another 3 - 5 months and then I'd be trying to remove them all again to get the foirni to spawn.
Click to expand...

I'd try a clown pleco and a school of tetras. Clown plecos love driftwood.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
 
darth pike said:
Nice update. Can't wait until that male dorsal colors in.
Click to expand...

It's getting there. They actually look a lot better in person than in pictures and video. The light background and light sand probably isn't helping any. The largest fish (which I'm guessing is the male) definitely has a maroon dorsal. I also notice, and you can see it in the videos, that they show orange on the body just behind the pectoral fins and at the caudal peduncle. I just started noticing that this week.
 
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