Question for all you frontosa owners out there. Do all adult frontosa get drab looking when they reach adulthood? Every adult frontosa I see for sale has a washed out look about it. Is this because of inferior food or is this what they all look like? I've seen some decent looking frontosa on videos, but not many. I like that they are reportedly not very active in the aquarium. I've seen some in larger tanks with light colored sand and like the look.
Frontosa coloring
- Thread starter Mij
- Start date
I'm not exactly sure. I've seen really nice adult Frontosa's and some that look really crappy. The faded ones could be fry from inbred brother and sister frontosa's that breed and then have fry that grow up and then breed again over and over with each other creating a genitic bottleneck. Or it could be something completely different.
I bought two different types of frontosa, and they are also two different levels of quality.
I first got into fronts and bought 6 burundi juvies from petco. They are about 6-8 months old now and are getting much more colorful as the grow (they are now 3-5 inches) . Burundi are not as blue and are known more for having a big hump on the head rather than having super color on the bodies. I actually find my burundi have decent color on the body as well.
After enjoying and keeping the burundi for about 5 months i did alot of research and liked the colors of the rarer more expensive fronts (zaire and Tanzanian) So i contacted a breeder on a front website and ordered 10 mpimbwe gibberosa (gibberosa are also frontosa but are bluer species from the other end of the lake) . THese little babies are only one inch now and are so blue when they get excited they practically glow. I will send you some pics of adult fish from my frontosa website in a pm cause i dont want to post them on the open forum since they are not my pics.
Sounds like you want the tanz,zambian, or zaire variants. any of those should make you happy.
CG
I first got into fronts and bought 6 burundi juvies from petco. They are about 6-8 months old now and are getting much more colorful as the grow (they are now 3-5 inches) . Burundi are not as blue and are known more for having a big hump on the head rather than having super color on the bodies. I actually find my burundi have decent color on the body as well.
After enjoying and keeping the burundi for about 5 months i did alot of research and liked the colors of the rarer more expensive fronts (zaire and Tanzanian) So i contacted a breeder on a front website and ordered 10 mpimbwe gibberosa (gibberosa are also frontosa but are bluer species from the other end of the lake) . THese little babies are only one inch now and are so blue when they get excited they practically glow. I will send you some pics of adult fish from my frontosa website in a pm cause i dont want to post them on the open forum since they are not my pics.
Sounds like you want the tanz,zambian, or zaire variants. any of those should make you happy.
CG
Mij;1764166; said:
The one I bought a while ago had terrible color, now that it's settled in it's already coloring up. I would say that just about every large font I've seen has been nice apart from stressed out ones in tiny fish store tanks. the white on my front turns blackishgrey when it's freaked out. Mine's a bur so it dosen't have too much blue.
Thanks for all the info. cichlidgirl. Wow, I had no idea there were so many variants of frontosa. Great pictures also. I think I might be hooked! I really like the gibberosa specimens. I will definately be spending some time on that website. Thanks again!cichlidgirl;1764327;1764327 said:
Mij;1764840; said:
Your welcome. Here is a couple pics of my individual fish.
Here are my mpimbwe babies (1 inchers lol) as they grow their color should develop more and intensify, especially dominant fish.
Here is my petco burundi: IMO they are perfectly respectable fish, all of them were of this quality. They were the same price as if i bought from a breeder by the time you factored in shipping. I might have been lucky with the supplier of these fish, i dont know if this quality is the norm or not.
Here is my alpha in daytime with no tank lights and no flash. This is his most washed out colors and he still looks good IMO. As you can see there is no background or black sand. he looks even darker blue when there is black on black that im installing now in his new 265 gallon tank.
Here is a pic with the marine glow lights installed like i mentioned.
Here he is with a black background i was testing and black sand.
