Update pics of my young male Dovii (growing slow-why?)

[Flexxx]

Here are some updated photos of my young 5.5 inch male Dovii. He is not a glass banger yet, but he is a fire breathing murderer. My question is, when I purchased him in July he was only around 3 inches. It is now Nov and he is only 5.5 or mabe 6 inches. I feed him cichlid sticks, cichlid pellets, krill, color enhancement pellets, and every now and then I give him feeders. Why is he growing so slow? or is he growing at an average rate? Also Wal-Mart sells night crawlers, can I get him some night crawlers instead of feeders?

 

[cichlidinsomniac]

how often do you change his water, what are the parameters, feeders are a big no, what size is the tank, that is an extremely slow growth rate for a dovii

 

[Flexxx]

He is in a 55 gal right now with two Plecos. I do a 50% water change about every eight or nine days.

 

[famous323]

this works for me 25% water changes every week i feed my dovii feeders twice a week, a varied diet of blood worms and hiakri gold

 

[bitteraspects]

feeders are fine as long as you breed them yourself or you quarrentine them (i do it for 2 weeks if i need feeders)

more frequent wc will help. maybe remove at least one of the plecos

 

[Camphilophus]

don't feed feeders. The more water changes you can do the better. If you really want him to grow fast bump up his temperature to 82* and feed him 3-4 times a day with high protein foods. But.. all of this will cause him to live a shorter life, my suggestion is just keep up what you're doing, he will be big eventually. Big tanks + big water changes often are the key.

 

[Guapote]

I have some Dovii I am growing out. I know this is overkill but I do about 25% every 2-3 days.

 

[bitteraspects]

i was doing daily 30-50% WC on some of my growout tanks

i have 20 x 1.5" dovii growouts right now. im thinking about seperating them in smaller tanks (2 to a tank) and doing some experiments with wc and growouts.

 

[Camphilophus]

Water changes do play a big part but I've noticed more growth just by putting fish in larger tanks. I've done 50% water changes on some of my tanks 3-4 times a week and it does show improvement. I pulled some of my convict fry out of a 30gallon and tossed them in a 100gallon for food and they never got eating. They grew so much faster than the siblings I left in the 30gallon even with the same amount of water changes. I've thought about buying a 300gallon stock pond just to grow out some fish and move them to smaller tanks later. Hope my info helps.

 

[Militis]

HH pleco killa agian


nice dovii but