Frempongi's!

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Here are some bad pics

One that barely survived. It actually had it's lower gill plate bone completely torn away and just hanging by a tiny piece of flesh. Amazingly that wound seems to have healed.


Here is the culprit. It's hard to get my stupid festae pair to move for a pic
 
Looks good bro! I'm leaning towards fasciatus though, that's probably why they are so aggressive in that 125G I may be wrong though.
I have 6 frempongi in a 180G with minimal aggression.

lunsforj said:
Ok, got the wife's camera out and took some better pics of my fish

Tatered one


One who did the tatering

Click to expand...
 
Connecting dots would be the difference between the 2. I also noticed that the frempongi are more goldfish than the Fasciatus. If both of yours are male, the other will die unless you don't pull it out. If you have a quarantine tank, pull the battered one out and leave it there for a while. Or you can pull the dominant one out and leave the battered one in the 125g. If you want it to recover and grown fast, put the battered one in the tank that you see the most. This will ensure it eats a ton. I'm sure after 3 weeks, you'll see a bump in the growth of it.

Seems that the males will always kill of other males first to take away the competition incase a breeding opportunity comes around.

As far as their aggression, it differs from fish to fish. I've had some pretty vicious fremponi's that would take on other SA/CA cichlids twice their size (fremponi's around 2"). I always try to house them with fish twice their size and use the meaner SA/CA cichlids (RD's, Dovii's, Butterkoferi) to deter the aggression towards each other. Keep in mind, if they're both male, one will die. Even in my 180g, I can't keep 2 males of any 5 spot species in there. The male will go out of his way to kill the other.

Lunsorj, I see you're from OR. If you got these from the wetspot, they will most likely be Hemichromis Fasciatus. If they are Hemichromis Fasciatus, they'll be wild caught as well. I got my last batch from them some time last year.

It's hard to tell from your pics what they are. Lighting looks dim and fish look a lil stressed. What are your water parameters? Keep us updated as well. Nice to see a new 5 spot species.
 
Gatling said:
Looks good bro! I'm leaning towards fasciatus though, that's probably why they are so aggressive in that 125G I may be wrong though.
I have 6 frempongi in a 180G with minimal aggression.
Click to expand...

We definitely need better pics. When's the Fasciatus is stressed, most don't have the connecting dots. They bar up just like frempongi and Elongatus.

Make sure you keep us updated on your Frempongi! Shoot some vids! I'm hoping we can swap some fish around when it warms up a little. I should have some fry from Fasciatus and Elongatus by then. I may have some spare WC Hemichromis Fasciatus. I do try to keep them close tho incase one from my pair dies.
 
Hey Will I didn't want to derail your thread with talk about my fish, but you were in fact correct about the fasciatus thing. The dominant fish is starting to show the connecting dots. My fish didn't exactly come from the Wet Spot but came from the Cichlid Exchange, which is where the Wet Spot gets their fish. So they would of been the same type the Wet Spot sells.

Right now my fish are getting along and I'm afraid to separate them for fear of reintroduction aggression. I added some floating plants that the submissive one retreats into when the dominant fish gets rowdy. I also added 4 buttikoferi of similar size which seem to draw the attention of the dominant fish away from the submissive one. The submissive one seems to be starting to heal and is eating really well, so my plan was to keep an eye on them for now. If things take a turn for the worse I probably will remove the dominant fish.

What's kinda difficult is I've kept many Centrals and South American cichlids and can read the cues pretty well when fish are different sexes and might pair up. With these I can't seem get a bead on them. I don't know if I have a male and female or 2 males and the larger one is just tolerating the other. My assumption is if I had 2 males, the larger fish would have killed the other one already.
 
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Ok, thought this was funny. I think one of my large festae must of had enough of my fasciatus. After hearing some commotion in my tank I went back to check on it and found this.


It appears to be a perfect bite mark on the top of the head. The fish also is quite submissive right now as well.
 
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Sexing is quite hard with these species. The only differences I could tell is by the shape of the head. The male wil have a slight angle/hump as to where the females are just straight or rounded. Pretty hard to see from the begging but it's there. It's slight as well.
As far as having 2 males in the same tank, it is possible but the fish they're being kept with must be twice the size and your meaner ones. Will also need to pack the hell out of the tank. I think in my 90g I had around 20 cichlids in there with 2 5 spots. You basically put so many fish in there so there' son territory to claim at all or there's to many for them to chase. This is the only method I've found to be successful with pairing these guys.
All cichlids I've put in with these guys that were the same size, all have died. Didn't matter what they were from RD's, Dovii's, you name it. they must be bigger. These guys seem to grow pretty quickly to 6-7" so they've out grown all the cichlids I've put there with them. I've made a network in my area and we swap bigger cichlids around when trying to pair these guys. So for a 3" fry, we have a 7" RD, 8-9" Oscar, 7' GT, a 6-7" umbee and a few others. When things get feisty, we load the bigger ones to each other.

Get more side shots if you can. I'm thinking this one with the bite on the head is a male.

And just because it's the dominant one doesn't mean it's a male. I've had some real nasty females killing all.

This vid is one of my F1 fry, started flexing as soon as I put it in with my big boys. I though this was a male, it ended up being a female.

 
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Oh and the reason I suggested taking the dominant one out is, the non dominant one will stay stressed, won't eat as great and within a month or so, the dominant one will double the size of the other in the tank. My last batch of WC's I bought, the medium sized one was the owner of the tank for probably a couple months (bought 5) out of the blue, the bigger one decided it was done being punked. I finally had to pull all the others out of the tank. My dominant one is probably 7" where the 2nd biggest is around 4 then the last to being 2-3".
You are very right about the reintroducing them though. These fish are very hard to keep due to their aggression.

If you do need to reintroduce, I would recommend dividing a portion of the tank off, put the new on on that side and leave it there for 2 weeks. You'll be able to tell what's going to happen after a few days. If you get them hanging out by the divider and they start clearing around (they want to mate) leave divider there for at least a week. Take the divider down when you have a full day to keep an eye on them.

Hope this helps.
 
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