Jag growth diary

[Fish on Fire]

Well, I just recently bought a 3" TL jaguar cichlid, the largest one that Petsmart had for only $1.99. He was terrorizing the other jags so I think I did them a favor. I will be raising this one, if it turns out to be a male, as the jaguar of my monster cichlids project. (The others will include a male: Red Terror, Dovii, and umbee). These will all be housed in a 1000 gallon pond set up when they get around 10" in my 55 grow out. I will be growing them out one by one for now, according to availability, starting with the jaguar.

This is him as of: 06/13/08

This is his grow out tank. I might be getting some dithers for him because he is freaked right now due to the red terror that used to be in there (she is in the pond thing) which will end up in the pond too.

And this is the temp pond that I set up due to my dad's request that I try keeping something temporary to see how it is before making it more permanent.

He is also not touching the hikari staple pellets. He was already skinny as hell so I threw in some tetras from my planted tank and he half-ate 4 of them, bit their bodies off but left their heads, was too scared to hunt them with me watching closely. Hopefully he changes.

His grow out used to look like this:

Until he started hiding all the time, so today I moved out all the decor and rocks into the pool. Figure he might as well get used to me instead of hiding all the time.

Thanks for looking, and peace.

 

[xEchOx]

Sounds like an interesting project. I have a few suggestions. I had a male jag that was very similar to yours. Would not accept pellets, and even once he started eating them, he wouldn't eat very many. Night crawlers (worms) are a good way to stuff him full of protein, though you should get him to accept pellets before you do this. Krill, and HBH supersoft pellets were his favorites. If you can't get him on dry pellets, its important to really mix his diet up, or he will really become fussy.

I would add a background to the tank. Preferably dark so he feels as though he is able to blend in. The light substrate and openness are most likely whats freaking him out. I have also found that adding, not removing hiding places helps them become more comfortable and hence they will come out more often.

Good luck, I'll be watching.

 

[Fish on Fire]

Sounds like an interesting project. I have a few suggestions. I had a male jag that was very similar to yours. Would not accept pellets, and even once he started eating them, he wouldn't eat very many. Night crawlers (worms) are a good way to stuff him full of protein, though you should get him to accept pellets before you do this. Krill, and HBH supersoft pellets were his favorites. If you can't get him on dry pellets, its important to really mix his diet up, or he will really become fussy.

I would add a background to the tank. Preferably dark so he feels as though he is able to blend in. The light substrate and openness are most likely whats freaking him out. I have also found that adding, not removing hiding places helps them become more comfortable and hence they will come out more often.

Good luck, I'll be watching.

Thanks for the input. I had a male jag before this one, raised it from 1.5" in a bare bottom tank to 5" (had to sell it then cause didn't have room for it, it was an impulse buy) and he was very owner responsive and was never shy, even tried to bite my fingers every time I did a water change.

Hopefully I can turn this one around. I'll see what adding more hiding places will do for him if this doesn't work after a week. He was always constantly hiding in the little cave thing at Petsmart also. He would rush out to punk his tankmates and then see someone standing outside and then he would hide again. I'll take a new pic every 2 weeks.

 

[bigspizz]

Sounds cool! I'm subscribing

 

[citrinelum]

nice project

 

[Fish on Fire]

I got him off of feeders now. But now my problem is, I just realized that Hikari cichlid staple is only 39% protein with wheat flour being the second highest ingredient. >.< How is NLS and Omega One for growth rates? Should I just make my own food?

 

[xEchOx]

I've had excellent results with NLS, but I've never seen it in a larger pellets. If they made that, I'd be on it like.... well, you know.

 

[Fish on Fire]

Alright, I took peep's advice and added some decor to the tank:

And a background (lol, it's tarp):

And this happened:

He went from here:

To here:

 

[mbunafishkeeper]

well he looks slightly more happy, id feed him cichlid gold or NLS cichlid formula for growth, also good as a staple.

 

[bigriver]

Looks good now go out and buy some cheap dithers to bring him out and about silver dollars,tiger barbs,tin foil barbs once you do that you will see a big change in him.