orange head coloring up

[peathenster]

Kept a few fry from the last spawn. They are almost 6 months old now and coloring up nicely. Had to throw them in a discus tank temporarily but they don't seem to mind the bare bottom...begging for food all the time

[YT]z3TjBCAcpIY[/YT]

 

[fishmamma]

Wow those are gorgeous!! I recently started getting into earth eaters.. love um!

 

[ryansmith83]

They look awesome. You can put them in the box with my angels.

Unfortunately, my orange heads from Ken (I think they were your fry originally?) didn't turn out. I got them as little 1/2" guys last March and they barely grew at all. The one male is maybe 3" now and all the rest are only 2". No idea what happened.

 

[peathenster]

Wow those are gorgeous!! I recently started getting into earth eaters.. love um!

Thanks

They look awesome. You can put them in the box with my angels.

Unfortunately, my orange heads from Ken (I think they were your fry originally?) didn't turn out. I got them as little 1/2" guys last March and they barely grew at all. The one male is maybe 3" now and all the rest are only 2". No idea what happened.

The last time I bred them before that was Sept. 2009 Maybe they are going to have a growth spurt soon - they are at breeding age

 

[hbluehunter]

They look great, how big are they ?? Are they from the same batch i got from you ?? Mine are looking great but not coloring up like that yet though..

 

[peathenster]

They look great, how big are they ?? Are they from the same batch i got from you ?? Mine are looking great but not coloring up like that yet though..

Yep they are from the same batch. Pushing 4" now. They really colored up in the past month. I wonder if it had anything to do with being in the discus tank - temperature is ~84F with lots of WC and high protein food.

 

[hbluehunter]

That might def have something to do with it. Mine are no-where close to that, but i'm just feeding 3 kinds of pellets, and my temps around 78-80. and almost forgot to add 1 60% WC a week.. I'd like to do more but the wife yells at me about the water bill each time i do one..lol

 

[ryansmith83]

Once you keep discus, you start to keep all your cichlids like discus.. then you realize how big and colorful they end up compared to the way you did it before. lol. All that food and clean water really does the trick. It's just a lot of work and gets exhausting.

 

[peathenster]

That might def have something to do with it. Mine are no-where close to that, but i'm just feeding 3 kinds of pellets, and my temps around 78-80. and almost forgot to add 1 60% WC a week.. I'd like to do more but the wife yells at me about the water bill each time i do one..lol

I'm sure they'll have a growth spurt soon. I feed mine small Xtreme pellets, tetra color bits and lots of freeze dried black worms.

Once you keep discus, you start to keep all your cichlids like discus.. then you realize how big and colorful they end up compared to the way you did it before. lol. All that food and clean water really does the trick. It's just a lot of work and gets exhausting.

That's exactly it! Most of my smaller tanks now get 80% WC every 2 days. Feels like I'm doing nothing but WC everyday...

 

[ryansmith83]

That's exactly it! Most of my smaller tanks now get 80% WC every 2 days. Feels like I'm doing nothing but WC everyday...

Same here. I raise most fry and juvenile fish this way to get maximum size out of them. Once they hit adult size, I usually cut this back to one large w/c a week.

I look at it this way... all those water changes gives me plenty of time in the fish room to interact with all my little money pits.