Well I lucked out and grabbed 3 1" f1 festae for 20$ which is an amazing price. But on to other things. I set up my 150g and it's cycling for now until they get bigger lol. What are good tankmates for festae. I know they can get up to 16" and are aggressive. My lfs has silver aros for 20$ would they be an ok tankmate for them? What do you guys suggest.
Picked up 3 festae. Tankmate question.
- Thread starter Kanta
- Start date
IME Festae grow pretty slow. If you get another cichlid like a red devil, jaguar, dovii, motaguense, texas, umbee...they will probably outgrow your little festae.
For now, I'd grow them out with some silver dollars and when they hit 4" or so, you can add your favorite other cichlid.
Also note that females are sometimes the more aggressive of the two when small...then when the male hits "puberty" the roles reverse and you then have a real mean female and a super mean male.
Good luck with your fry and post some pics.
For now, I'd grow them out with some silver dollars and when they hit 4" or so, you can add your favorite other cichlid.
Also note that females are sometimes the more aggressive of the two when small...then when the male hits "puberty" the roles reverse and you then have a real mean female and a super mean male.
Good luck with your fry and post some pics.
IME, it depends on what you feed them and how often you do water changes as to how fast they grow. I've fed mine Xtreme peewee pellets to this point of 4 per feeding and 4 times a day with 30% water changes every other day and mine went from around a half inch to well over an inch. As mentioned though, I'd wait till they're grown out before adding tank mates. I feel like they need special attention to get them grown out to size and they wont get it with tank mates.
Kanta;4880848; said:
NLS is great food, I just bought the 1mm Cichlid formula tonight and will be feeding that to mine until they get big enough, then it will be upped to the 3mm. I must add, I have 4 Festae and they're all still rather small and the 1mm is the proper size. Stick with the NLS, I fed it to my Dempsey's when I got them as fry and they turned out amazing.
Kanta;4880888; said:
It will, but it's worth it, they're extremely beautiful fish. Just try and keep their water changed as frequent as possible. That with good diet they'll grow fairly good for you. No problem btw.
Kanta;4880827; said:
You can't sex 1" Festae - they will changeback and forth til approx. 4-5" when the males start losing their barring and females start losing their blue spangling and even then it can be tricky. 150's probably okay for a pair of Festae, for tankmates, large teras like Red Hooks, smaller Bichers (senagalus or gold dust), and medium size Cats like Lima's would probably work better than ither cichlids long term. Silver Arrows get too large for 150's might work for a year if the Arrow doesn't eat the juvi Festae, even small Silver Arrows will outgrow the Festae over night.
