Living with the Parachromis Giants

[polleni]

We are sure most of you who have kept those large guapotes have a story to tell about their intelligence and interaction with their keeper. Well, we have summarized some of those moments here : http://www.mchportal.com/fishkeeping-mainmenu-60/stock-the-inhabitants-mainmenu-79/stocking/723-living-with-the-parachromis-giants.html

We hope you will enjoy the reading !

George & Marina

[Bojan Dolenc]

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We hope you will enjoy the reading !

George & Marina

Hi, George, I really enjoy reading, cichlids are evidently much smarter, as majority of people think. You have fantastic, praiseworthy aqua-page.
Best regards
Bojan

[polleni]

Thanks Bojan, as for the page, it is the results of the work of many people, you included !
Glad you liked it.

[mike b]

I have my share of parachromis but my most interactive cichlid to date has got to be my 12" red devil Guapo he seems to tolerate me but the minute my wife enters the room he goes nuts attacking the glass flaring and trying to bite her through the glass and of course she will tease him by kissing me and hugging me and sticking her tongue out at him which only seems to agitate him even more the minute she walks away hes calm again and gives me a look like thats right this is my house! Ive also got a male red tiger motag that seems to like when I have company at which point he will swin in front of the glass so everyone can see how handsome he is.

[Piotr Koba]

Great reading, I enjoyed it a lot! And that video, just amazing
So, George, as I understand you keep all of your Parachromis on their own, as pets, not for breeding at all? I'd love to keep Umbee or Red Mota in this way, like a parrot

[polleni]

Hi Piotr,

You are right to wonder if we keep them isolated (one fish per tank) and why we do that.. Breeding them is not an issue per se although there is some risk associated with this task, especially for the female.

We have already bred the ex-Cichlasoma festae (a wild caught pair) as reported here : http://www.mchportal.com/fishkeeping-mainmenu-60/stock-the-inhabitants-mainmenu-79/breeding-hints-and-tips-mainmenu-83/421-keeping-and-breeding-the-ex-cichlasoma-festae.html as well as the P. managuensis, ages ago : http://www.malawicichlidhomepage.com/aquainfo/managuensis_spawn.html

However, spawning them always proved to be the first (pleasant) step in a process which ended in sorrow and stress, when we found out that nobody really wanted the juveniles and we had to make special offers to petshops (e.g. you will take 30 P. managuensis and I will give you another 30 Pundamilia nyererei for free) to accept them in their tanks. Still, months later, some of the fish of that brood were still there while many other broods were left with their parents, eaten one by one. In some cases, the female tried to defend them against the male, which proved to be a bit too much in the confinements of a tank. In some cases (e.g. P. managuensis, P. sp. Andapa) we were barely able to save the female. In this sense, why risk our beautiful females for nothing ? This is particularly true for the P. dovii for which we have read many reports about males which attacked and killed their female partners once they crossed the "magic" 30 cm mark. We feel the same as you, we love to see a pair of large cichlids living together in the same tank but unless the female is older and larger than the male, things don't work very well in the end.

In the case of rare fish, we usually bring the two parents together for some time, spawn them and then remove the male again. This allowed our P. sp. Andapa pair to have more than 8 broods and still reach the age of 8 years. However, demand was particularly low, even for this rare and beautiful fish, so we didn't make any attempts to breed them during the last 3 years. There was a (perhaps) interesting posting some time ago referring to this very issue in this forum.. which, we hope, will explain our stance more clearly :http://www.cichlidae.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5903&p=36806#p36806

Just some thoughts.. It is clear that keeping large guapotes or large predators (especially cichlids, which are sometimes too clever for their own good) together is not the same as keeping mbuna together. The differences are so great that it is more like keeping totally different fish..

George & Marina

[Piotr Koba]

Thanks for brilliant reply.
Yes, the idea of breeding only rare BIG cichlids seems to be very accurate. But I imagine how hard it would be to sell (or even give away) such beauties like P. sp. Andapa here, in Poland - just because I found it really tough to sell ~70 young dwarf Crenicichla here. I think more popular guapotes should be bred only as youngsters (much under 30cm, when fry amount is not as alarming), if one want to see the fry. The other option is, a bit less humane (i think it's good word in English??) to give fry to someone that owns predatory fish, snakeheads, or similar. But if we know that they (fry) would go to snakeheads' jaws, why do we breed them? Not logical at all.
After reading your Article it made me want to keep such giant on it's own someday

[PepoLD]

I loved that Vieja Fenestratus


great read!

[polleni]

Thanks for the nice comments, we are really glad you liked those articles (as well as the nice comments about our site).

Piotr, if you ever find the tank space to keep one of those giants, drop us a line. Perhaps it will be a nice opportunity to try breeding the P. dovii (provided you will take enough of them with you) !

George & Marina

[Piotr Koba]

Piotr, if you ever find the tank space to keep one of those giants, drop us a line. Perhaps it will be a nice opportunity to try breeding the P. dovii (provided you will take enough of them with you) !

Well, just tell to them to have only one youngster, then... I'll take "entire" brood