Encouraging Geophagus growth

[Sonofthunder]

Been awhile since I’ve posted here. My 120-gal South American tank is still going strong, but I’m wondering what I can do to encourage my four geo. abalios to grow more quickly. My h. severus has really taken off but the geos are 2 years old and only about 3-4 inches long. I have read that they are slow growers so was not really concerned, but recently I read some things that made me think mine are growing slower than usual. I feed hikari cichlid gold once per day and do a monthly 50% water change. Filtration is a Fluval FX4. Was thinking of feeding more frequently and adding a second FX4 for more filtration. The severum really gobbles up a lot of the pellets so maybe they just need a greater quantity of food, with more filtration to help deal with the extra mess. Any other suggestions?

 

[C. Breeze]

Probably feed 2x more often and make sure that everyone is getting it and 6x more water changes and you’ll be impressed.

 

[fishguy1978]

I feed a variety of different pellets ranging in size 2mm - 6mm. All pellets are sinking so my Geo's are able to get what the H. Notatus and the SD miss. I would also try doing smaller more regular water changes too. I think my Redheads are about 2yrs now.

Geophagus sp.

Title says it all. Thread for hosting pictures of my Geophagus collection. G. Redhead tapajo G. Brasiliensis RHT fry are from @Dave62

www.monsterfishkeepers.com

 

[duanes]

I find water changes are one of the biggest factors in growth, or lack of growth
Seeing that you only change 50% per month is telling.
I have had different species of Geo's grow 7" in 1 year.
But I do 30 to 40% water changes every other day.
Alpha fish produce growth inhibiting hormones that aren't removed any other way, than with frequent regular water changes.


above 2012, below same individual 2013
,
most Geo's come from fast flowing waters, with constant water changes every minute removing hormones from the immediate vicinity.

 

[Jexnell]

I would change the frequency and percentage of water changed to biweekly and 75% of the water volume.

I personally change 75% or more every three days.
In a years time I got thisto grow into this

This little guy
After a year turned into

 

[neutrino]

I agree about water changes. While there's no one size fits all formula, water changes can either be a bottleneck to growth or one of the keys to growth. Your geos don't necessarily look underfed from what I can tell, but one way to even out food distribution is by using smaller pellets. That way fish have to work a little more and one or two fish can't quickly gobble up everything. I use sinking pellets and typically drop them in enough of the filter flow so they scatter. With geos it gives them something to do and there's not much worry they won't sift around to get it all.

I feed geos smaller feedings more than once a day, it better fits their natural habits than one large feeding imo. But it's not so much how many feedings as total food intake and different people may have different philosophies on that.

Food is a subject of endless debate, but there are better options than Hikari ime, products with fewer of the following ingredients found in Cichlid Gold: wheat flour, flaked corn, brewers dried yeast, corn gluten meal, wheat starch, rice bran...

 

[Ogertron3000]

I had red head tapajos, with a weekly 50% or so water change and NLS pellets they still grew very slowly. I had them with EBAs and they grew much more slowly than them.
I gave them to a friend he still has them and they have grown a lot in the last few years, they look really nice and i sort of wish i kept them.
Your fish look healthy so I would just increase the water changes and then unfortunately you will just have to wait

 

[ryansmith83]

Water changes are more influential over growth than people realize. There's a reason lots of discus keepers get their fish to 6" in size in a year -- they do frequent water changes. I started applying this to other SA cichlids when I was growing out my own fry to sell and it works.

In addition to water changes, feed your Geos smaller pellets. They sift the sand for food and mine have always had a hard time with larger pellets. They will chew and chew before swallowing them or spitting them out. I find that they actually get more to eat if the pellets are more easily swallowed.

 

[neutrino]

With most of the geos I've had, including red heads, most of the males have grown to about 6 inches in a year, and some a bit more. Females a bit smaller. Ime that's typical of a lot of species of similar adult sizes, so I don't consider them slow growing.

Typical water changes for me are 60-80% weekly, and occasionally 90% or more. Over the past 20 years I've fed mostly NLS, Omega One (until they added more wheat, etc. to their formula) and some freeze dried mysis shrimp, which all my fish like and for some species is a good growth food ime.

There are other factors that can influence growth, temperature, dissolved oxygen content, tank size... and easily overlooked is the influence of hardness or mineral balance on egg size, larva growth, etc.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4907526/

 

[jjohnwm]

Sometimes I wonder if there is too much effort put into "power-feeding" fish in order to achieve the maximum possible growth rate. A fish can be completely healthy without being in a race to turn into a monster in the shortest possible time.

Back when I was breeding snakes, it was generally accepted that power-feeding resulted in big, heavy, beautiful snakes that tended to live shorter lives than those fed a more-moderate but still-adequate diet. I hasten to add that I never researched this carefully, so it might be some more of that wonderful "common wisdom" that often turns out to be totally false.

I do know that if I split a brood of fish between indoor tanks and outdoor containers for the summer, the indoor fish (fed heavily) usually grow less than the outdoor fish, who receive only occasional supplemental feedings and subsist mostly upon stuff they scrounge up themselves. This has been true for Goodeids, Convicts, Swordtails, Jordanella and a number of other fish species over the years.