Help with a tank of festae red terror

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R

RMac

Gambusia
MFK Member
Mar 4, 2007
156
1
16
Michigan
Originally I purchased 4 festae from a guy in the hopes of getting a pair. He said that he purchased them himself from J.Rapps. They were about 3 1/2 to 4 inches in length. They were mostly looking like males at the time. I went ahead and purchased a guaranteed female from Rapps myself, and she is definately the "Queen" of my 5 festae. Of the other four, one male has really stood out to prove he is all male with excellent color/markings. The two seemed to want to be a pair. For a while I had them in a separate tank 125 Gallon, but the two never bred, and were occasionally picking at each other pretty good. Eventually, I threw the other 3 oddball/unknown sex festae back in with them to try to help keep aggression down. Getting more and more into the central stock, I also ended up dumping some Blue Zaire Frontosa in with them as well, along with one solo female Grammodes, and now about 4 young 3 1/2" Dovii, and about 6 F1 Midas that are around 3" as well. My main plan is wanting a breeding pair of festae in there. What could I keep with them in there that would not impede on their breeding attemps? I would love to hear any suggestions... I don't have any local fish store near me that woudl be able to take on unneeded fish. Heck, I have about 8-10 of the Moba Zaire blues / three of them are Kapampas. Just not sure what to do, or who to keep in there for the long haul. Should I get rid of the three oddball festae? for starters? In other tanks I have a group of 10 Umbie growouts that are about 3" or so in size, and then a breeding pair of Dovii in another tank which are about 7" male with 5 1/2" female which is sitting on eggs laid 2 days ago.
What I am hoping to hear are some: "This is what I would do" feedback to help me prioritize what I got going on... LOL I also have a Petsmart Midas taking up a 50 Gal breeder tank, he is developing an outstanding kok on his head, so I am kind of liking him... Two other tanks I am not using at the moment are smaller 40 Gal breeder tank, and a 29. What to do, what to do? LOL. Thought about starting up a mixed mbuna/african tank for a little added color/activity. Any thoughts? I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, but just wanted to figure out a way where I can get my nice Festae to start breeding, (without killing each other.)
 
A friend of mine has a breeding pair (4-5") in a 72" 125 gallon with a pair of Flowerhorn, the male about killed the FH pair and they had to be removed from the tank. The male is so aggressive now that the fry are in the tank he'll litteraly jump out of the tank to try to bite my buddies finger (I'll get some video of it tonight, I'm going over there to pick up 50 or so fry)

If it were me I'd put em in the 125 with a couple of dithers (something fast to elude the RT) How do the pair act towards the other Festae in the tank?
 
Firstly, "KoK" is a dirty hybrid term used for Flowerhorns. "Nuchal hump" is the correct terminology.

Regarding the Festae, for starters you have way way too many fish in that tank, and I'm guessing you find that the Festae hunt eachother down regardless. I've never kept big aggressive species for this reason, I hate it when my fish do damage to eachother, and big aggressive fish like Festae are renowned for ripping their partners open. Your post is a bit of a mess, but from what I can gather, you've got a literal assload of fish in there to try and spread aggression and it's not working.

Absolutely nothing is going to survive in a 125 with breeding Festae, probably not even themselves if they aren't a perfect pair. Each fish has a different character and temperament, if they don't want to become a pair they probably aren't going to, and with a fish of this aggression level you can't leave it up to chance when they get bigger because you're going to be fishing out body parts sooner or later.

I think you need to sell a lot of fish, and either try and find more Males for your Female with a big process of trial and error trying to get them to breed, as well as having a bigger tank lined up for the future like a 180 (6x2x2) because a 125 (Which I presume is a 4x2x2) won't be big enough.

Always keep in the back of your mind that fish like Festae can just 'snap' and there's often not a whole lot you can do about it. It's not much different to humans, some people get married, have kids, and live happily ever after; some people get pregnant on the first date and end up murdering their husband as a result of post-mortem depression. Quite a good example from this week.
 
I put the 3 oddball festae in with the petsmart midas temporarily & with some smaller F1 Midas and, just have the pair of festae in the 125 Gal, which is 6 foot x 18 inch x 18 inch roughly. This is the pair that paired themselves off originally, and they aren't too bad with each other, but I had just seen the males aggressiveness getting a little more than I care for. I took out everything else except for 10 moba/kapampa frontosa which are about an inch smaller in size than the festae, and they seem to tolerate each other nicely. I put the grammodes and with some more F1 Midas, and a few 3 1/2" Dovii growouts... all about the same size.
Good news is , yesterday in our area we had like 4-5 tornados, and I came home to a power outage after getting out of work (nightshift), and it took like 14-18 hours for the power to come back on, but no casualities! My dovii was sitting on two day old eggs, when the power outage occured, and as of right now, only about 20% of the eggs have turned white, so hopefully the rest might be okay.
Thanks for your suggestions guys, I definately have been on the lookout for a larger tank for quite some time, but where I live, you have to travel quite a ways to get anything bigger than the 125, unless I find a private individual selling off.
Another poing I have to make, I have had some smaller Mayan cichlids in the past, and they were much crazier/ murder like than my festae have been on each other so far, male was just relentless on the female. My pair is nothing like that (yet)!
 
I kept a breeding pair of Festae and a non-breeeding male/female loisellei together in a 135g which I believe has the same footprint as your 125. I had to put up a divider when the fry became free swimming though or the loisellei would have been toast.

Oh and Japes is correct about your fishes' Nuchal Hump. Cichlids don't grow cocks on their head. ;)
 
I,ve had a breeding pair of Festae for a yr,in a 135 community with no problems except there first 2 attempts at breeding my JD run them off and eat the eggs.Just moved them to there own 75 and the male started bashing the female so I had to move Her back to the 135.They are 5"&8" and just starting to show the agressiveness they are famous for.Yours will slowly get more agressive with size
 
LOL, yah, I hate that term KOK..., and am also familiar with the term Nuchal Hump,...it just wasn't coming to me when I wrote this.
 
^^^
Hey what happened?


Alright my youtube inbed didn't work. Here's a couple of pics. The first with their eggs on the driftwood. The second with fry.

Festaewitheggs.jpg


FestaewithFry.jpg
 
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