Thanksgiving Fish House Updates - Festae & Xilos

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aclockworkorange

Dovii
MFK Member
Jun 24, 2010
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Rose City
Finally got some decent time off for the holiday and was able to sit down and snap a few bad pictures.
This summer I set up a new "fish room" with a standard 180, and racked two 75s with two 40 breeders, as well as three racked 20 longs. These are in what was a guest bedroom / laundry room, and I mainly wanted to use them for growout and breeding projects. I guess that's another thread, this is the cichlid section, right?

My MFK app has been crashing so I'm going to do this in a couple posts...


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OK, to follow up my last thread I ended up with this big festae male somehow, pretty much a rescue situation...

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I took some time to quarantine him and run a few treatments for internal parasites. I got him eating night crawlers and then on to pellets.

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I was really looking to find him a nice home locally, but no one local seemed interested in him, and the festae guys I talked to said he was a nice enough fish...



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Long story short, I figured I'd just keep him for a while... So, Jason (freshwaterpredators) sent me down his biggest female breeder from Alaska, named Mallory (thanks again bro, you're a great COD player and a true gentleman, lol!).

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I let her settle in to her new 180 gallon (well, a bit less with the dropped water) home for a few days (moved these guys in the picture out, of course):
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Got her eating really well and the layout all figured out so she could hide from the male when I decided to introduce him.

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So after everyone had settled, a few days later I dropped the big guy in and held my breath, net and divider in hand.

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She immediately swam over to him from the other side of the tank and started coloring up and displaying, and he started showing off as well.

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Surprisingly, they seemed to bond immediately and she has rarely left his side.

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So that's about all there is to report on the festae. I did give them some nice chew toys:

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Back to the fish I moved out for the festae, I moved most of them up to my 72x30x24" 225 gallon. I will post a picture of this tank in a few days hopefully, it's been completely rescaped and should look nice.

This is a "Lake Xiloa" biotope group, F1 jags from the lake from Aquamojo, F1 xiloaensis (only found in the lake ;)) from Rapps, and some beefy centrarchus from him as well (I think these are Lago Nicuragua strain?).

The xilos are really my focus tonight. I got four, ordering two males and two females, and just was going to be happy if I ended up with a nice male. If they bred, cool, if not, whatever. They came in at 5-6" late in the summer. When I moved them last week, I measured the alpha male and he was 9.5".


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So I thought for a while Rapps sent me three males and one female of the xiloaensis (sexing wasn't guaranteed or anything). I got three orange/white creamsicle, two of which I thought were big males, and a smaller obvious female, as well as one completely white male. There was absolutely zero aggression or even much interaction between them, Rapps told me xilos were "kind of weird" like that and took a while for him to breed (longer than any other Midas complex fish). Like I said, I didn't really care much about breeding.

When I moved these two (who I thought were my two big males) they started really going at it...

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So now I'm thinking maybe he did send two females (which is great, because I wasn't really liking the one I knew was a female). I'm keeping my eyes on these two, that nuchal hump on the big guy just sprouted up and he's decided he's boss of the house now.


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Great lookin set ups bro!!! The festaes look amazing and hopefully they'll spawn for you:) that male is coming along nicely and definitely an awesome rescue. So keep the updates coming with this tank. I'll be lookin out for the 225 update as well, as I'm interested in how the jags turn out;)
 
So, I'm left wondering about "her," as I can't see much of a vent, and I'm tempted to just net it out and take a few good pictures of it. I'm more inclined to just see what happens, if things get too rough there's a 100 gallon sump below the tank that has plenty of room for fish.

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Anyway, that's more than enough from me tonight!


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Freshwaterpredators said:
Great lookin set ups bro!!! The festaes look amazing and hopefully they'll spawn for you:) that male is coming along nicely and definitely an awesome rescue. So keep the updates coming with this tank. I'll be lookin out for the 225 update as well, as I'm interested in how the jags turn out;)
Click to expand...

Oh yeah man, I'll send you some pics. They are just sooo damn mellow, but he has grown almost 4" since I got him. Like I said I'm giving them until the new year and deciding on them...

You got your MSMC ready for tonight, Recon?


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