received my TUIC order this morning
- Thread starter lostnight
- Start date
lostnight;1220528; said:
da's actually a good idea. wait for 'em to grow to their sexually mature age, then breed 'em is the best. i guess wait 4 'em to grow to about at least 8"?
Yeah, that's part of it, I still don't think my male Festae is quite up to handling a larger female at this time, he's doing fine right now, I'll let him mature a bit.
I figured I'd give some updates. So far I have 1 death, a Red Tiger Motaguense. One night he was breathing hard and behind the filter intake tube near the surface. Didn't look too damaged. Next morning he was dead. I'll discuss more on the RT Mota tank within the next few days, I'll just say for now the remaining 3 RTMs seem to be in good health.
For this post I'll give my cutteri update. I'll update my info on other TUIC purchases in later posts. I've been a little bit concered about my wild caught 4' male Cutteri I have in a 20 long with a smaller but proven female (bought from LFS). It's been 2 weeks and the new male is still afraid to go out into the open, so I'm like, "WTF, I have a lovely female in here ready to submit to you, what's up?". That's why I haven't posted any pictures of the male yet, he's been hiding.
I thought maybe dither fish would be required to get him out into the open. The female was timid also, but not near to the extreme extent of the much larger male. I just hate using tank space on dither fish. Nevertheless, I remembered the LFS having some very cool looking emperor tetras, and I was looking for an excuse to buy them. The emperor tetras have those cool blue eyes like the cutteris. But it figures, when I decided to pull the trigger and buy them they were already gone, sold. Man, they were there for months until I decided I wanted to get them. So I thought New Guinea Rainbows were also nice looking and would be super cool dithers with their red coloration, but of course, those were sold out also, just because I decided I wanted them. It's got to be a conspiracy. So I went home empty handed, this was a few days ago.
I bought my father a 14 gallon BioCube aquarium for his birthday in August. He once had one of those desk top 2 gallon aquariums in the 90s, and he kept talking about getting another one some day. I figured he'd be uch happier with the BioCube than one of those 2 gallon thingees. He had two barbs (rosy barbs I think) he wanted to get rid of because they chase each other too much and distract from his relaxation (obviously not a cichlid fan like me). He asked me if I wanted them. I laughed at first, then I remembered the cutteri tank. Then I said I would take them if he didn't mind me using them as target/dither fish for my cutteris. I explained to him what that meant and the risks involved to the fish he picked out and bought, and he was ok with it.
So I put those two little barbs in the cutteri tank today, and guess what? The cutteris came out into the open and actually hang out together somewhat. There is zero aggression so far. Here is a pic of the elusive TUIC male,the female can be seen more in the background.:
For this post I'll give my cutteri update. I'll update my info on other TUIC purchases in later posts. I've been a little bit concered about my wild caught 4' male Cutteri I have in a 20 long with a smaller but proven female (bought from LFS). It's been 2 weeks and the new male is still afraid to go out into the open, so I'm like, "WTF, I have a lovely female in here ready to submit to you, what's up?". That's why I haven't posted any pictures of the male yet, he's been hiding.
I thought maybe dither fish would be required to get him out into the open. The female was timid also, but not near to the extreme extent of the much larger male. I just hate using tank space on dither fish. Nevertheless, I remembered the LFS having some very cool looking emperor tetras, and I was looking for an excuse to buy them. The emperor tetras have those cool blue eyes like the cutteris. But it figures, when I decided to pull the trigger and buy them they were already gone, sold. Man, they were there for months until I decided I wanted to get them. So I thought New Guinea Rainbows were also nice looking and would be super cool dithers with their red coloration, but of course, those were sold out also, just because I decided I wanted them. It's got to be a conspiracy. So I went home empty handed, this was a few days ago.
I bought my father a 14 gallon BioCube aquarium for his birthday in August. He once had one of those desk top 2 gallon aquariums in the 90s, and he kept talking about getting another one some day. I figured he'd be uch happier with the BioCube than one of those 2 gallon thingees. He had two barbs (rosy barbs I think) he wanted to get rid of because they chase each other too much and distract from his relaxation (obviously not a cichlid fan like me). He asked me if I wanted them. I laughed at first, then I remembered the cutteri tank. Then I said I would take them if he didn't mind me using them as target/dither fish for my cutteris. I explained to him what that meant and the risks involved to the fish he picked out and bought, and he was ok with it.
So I put those two little barbs in the cutteri tank today, and guess what? The cutteris came out into the open and actually hang out together somewhat. There is zero aggression so far. Here is a pic of the elusive TUIC male,the female can be seen more in the background.:
Another pic, you can see one of the new barbs above the male. The female is on the extreme left.
So if you have problems getting your cichlids out into the open, try a couple of dither fish. Believe me, I couldn't have taken these pictures tonight of the new cutteri if I didn't put the barbs in there. I believe the cutteris might even breed soon. What a difference.
Thanks, I hope they breed. I miss my old male that was this female's mate. He got wacked by a Neet (same size) from a previous TUIC order. I'm glad to see this new male finally come out and be more social. No Neets is this tank, Neets are Cutteri Killas.
