I found it finally a page with more
Red Terror pictures, i inspected them thinking here we go there going to
be some gray fish with a slight red tinge. I was pleasantly surprised,
the pictures i saw were equally as impressive as the photo found at CHOP.
That's it i decided i had to have one, but i didn't get my hopes as here
in Australia there are many fish we cant get or import. I posted a message
on an Australian Cichlid discussion board and got a very quick reply, the
owner of the discussion board David Midgley was an avid American Cichlid
fan and was great help, a Fish Shop he worked in had some 1" Festae's for
$13.95 AUD each . I couldn't believe it i found an awesome fish, you could
get it in Australia but the price was huge. Well at the time it was i had
actually never brought Tropical fish before but had just bought a second
hand tank and had a $50 a week paper job ( i was in
year 11 at school at the time) , so i had no idea
how much fish normally cost, compared to fish i have now this is extremely
cheap. I had read in a number of places that with Americans if you wanted
a breeding pair you should buy at least 6 juveniles and grow them up together,
this was going to cost me around $84 not money i really had.
So anyway i
put of the Festae's for a while waiting to save some money, and saving
i'm not the best at. So it was probably about 1 month after the festae
urge i had and Dave sent me a message saying he had a 3" Festae a friend
of his had and sold it to him for $5 and it was mine if i wanted it so
i said definitely and i asked him to pick up another 1" from his work and
have my fingers crossed for a Male and Female. As soon as i had a free
day i arranged to pick the fish up from Dave along with some fish
Dave was giving away and i'm not one to say no. The first time i took a
peak at the Festae i thought damn all the pictures of Festae on the net
must be touched up, this 3" fish was a drab gray color with a small amount
of red tinge on his cudal fin. But i took him home and watched him grow
hoping there would be a colour change soon, the smaller one i got from
Dave's shop and it was the same in appearance. Anyway the big festae went
from 3" to 4" then to 5" the colour seemed to be a little stronger but
not by much, the gray however had turned a pale yellow green colour, all
during this time the smaller Festae had not grown at all from what i could
see. I was told they were slow growers, but my large male was doing ok,
why hadn't this smaller one grown. I just put it down to fry growing slow
and speeding up when they get around 3". I also got a second 1 " festae
from Dave's work again still the same drab colour, i also had this fish
with the other 1" fish for about 2 -3 month and still no growth. I started
to notice that the smaller festae had hollow bellies, i was told this was
from not eating, about 1 month later both died i presume from starvation
i fed them heaps but they didn't want to eat. I accepted these deaths telling
my self they just must be hard juveniles to raise, this was enforced
by the fact i never ever saw large specimens of Festae in shops.
After the deaths
of the 2 1" Festae's i decided not to get anymore but would keep looking
for a larger festae as i new raising them from 3" was easy as my larger
Festae was now 6" he grew steadily till about 8" in size roughly 1 year
after i got him from Dave this was when i started really looking for a
female. I started to find many larger males but never ever females by this
time i had also met another American Cichlid enthusiast, Kevin Sorrensen.
Kevin proved to be extreamely helpful, about 1 month after i met Kevin
he had an 8" female for me. I was stoked i wanted to pick her up straight
away but Kevin lived about 2 hours drive from where i did, anyway a week
later my Mum was going to visit a family friend who lived about 1 hours
drive further than Kevin. So it was organized i would drop by Kevin's and
take a look at her, Kevin was concerned that she would still be to stressed
for the long trip back to my house, but as usual i was impatient to get
her home. I had agreed with Kevin to drop by take a look and see if i wanted
to take her home, we arrived at Kevin's at around 6 pm i was so excited
i had never seen a female Festae before and i had since found out that
unlike the other American Cichlids the females had the most colour.
She was beautiful even thought she was like Kevin said very stressed and
due to the stress had an amazing blue colouration. I couldn't believe it
here was a supposedly very red fish that was blue, however you could see
a dark maroon colour under the blue sheen which led me to believe the blue
was because she was stressed, and she was truly a Red Terror. So anyway
i started talking to kevin about taking her home i knew i should probably
pick her up at a later date when she was less stressed but i also knew
the chances of me being down this way again anytime soon was slim, so i
decided i would risk it and take her. Then there was the dilemma that we
were on our way to see a family friend and that was a further hour away
then a 2 hour stop then the return 3 hour trip home, and i didn't want
her to travel 6 hours in a esky. So we decided to drop by Kevin's again
on our way home. So again at 10.30 pm we dropped by Kevin's picked her
up and left, finally i had a female Festae. Finally we were home and the
female Festae was doing fine, Kevin had given strict orders not to put
her in with the Male till she had recovered from the trip and stress so
i put a divider in the tank and introduced her to the tank, by this time
it was about 1 am so i promptly went to bed.
I woke up the
next morning and bolted downstairs to see how she was doing, i turned the
light on and she was still hiding in the same place she went last
night but still alive. Like i said i don't have much patience and i really
wanted to see how the male would react to her. So i removed the divider,
the Male eagerly went to investigate and as soon as She noticed the Male
she instantly turned from blue to a bright red, i guess all she needed
was a male interest to make her forget about her stress. The mouth locking
begun instantly and the female was noticeably winning, the male gave up
after only a short period of time and the female proceeded to strut her
stuff, with a huge gill flare and fins extended to there full capacity,
and some groovy shaking, the male started up doing a similar thing. I took
this as good news and left them for about an hour, i came back and the
male was hiding under a log and the female was swimming proudly round,
this amazed me but i quickly put the divider back in as i had to go to
work and didn't want to risk the male leaving them out without my supervision.
When i got home from work again i let them out and again the same thing
happened, after this i figured the tank may be a little small, it was 4ftx18"x18"
tank with the Festae's the only occupants, i had a larger 5ftx24"x30"
so i promptly started rearranging fish until i had a spare 125 gallon tank,
the Festae's were put in together and there were no problems whatsoever.
About 2 weeks after they were put in the big tank i noticed the females
tube was dropping and by the end of the next week and after a extreamely
aggressive spawning ritual (both male and female had
marks on there face from lip locking and shredded fins)
i had a somewhat dodgy patch of eggs, there were spread everywhere
but no where near as many as i imagined, i thought she may be eating them
so i moved the eggs to a tank of there own, the fry hatched but not 1 survived,
there was only about 10 fry that made it, i figure better luck next time.
I was sitting down next to the tank just looking at my prized pair as i
do and i noticed a little long brown sucker fish that i had missed when
i was rearranging fish for the Festae, that's when it hit me the sucker
fish had eaten the eggs, it then took me about 3 hours to catch the little
bugger but it was eventually removed to another tank. At this point in
time i also had a pair of 8" Dovii that had already bred and were
growing to big for there 70 gal so they were moved into with the festae
pair. The next day i awoke to a female Dovii floating at the top of the
tank she was still breathing so i moved her and she died a day later the
male Dovii was also damaged but not as much as the female was i also moved
him and he is still healthy to this very day. I put this attack down to
what your about to here happened next.
About
1 month later i had another batch of eggs, this time a huge full patch
was there, so as always when my fish breed it was the longest 13 days of
my life (this is actually an unusually long period
for most American Cichlids) until the larvae had hatched
and became free swimming. I had decided before hand during the long 13
days that i would remove half of the fry for me to raise and leave the
other half for the parents to look after, so i siphoned out about half
the fry and put them in a fry raising tank. About 1 week later half the
fry i had removed just died, and so did half the fry in the tank with the
parents, i still don't understand as to why this happened, i have a theory
about the food i fed them being to big for them but that will have to wait
till another time. I was'nt to upset about this as i still had a huge number
of fry left, but the number of fry continued to drop slowly in both the
big tank and fry tank until i thought i had about 100 fry left in my fry
raising tank and about 50 in the tank with the parents and this stage the
fry stopped dying off.
About
a week later i was sitting watching TV and i looked over at the tank and
saw her again laying another batch of eggs, i was pleased at this as i
didn't know if the fry i had now would continue to die off again and i
could also see the affect on the parents with having 2 separate batches
of fry to look after. In the morning i got a terrible shock, i had found
out what effect having 2 batches of fry would have on the parents.
The female was ripped to shredds but breathing very heavily, i removed
the male straight away but she died about 1 hour later i couldn't believe
it , just the night before i had a great bonded breading pair and now i
had a patch of sterile eggs and only a couple of the first batch of babies
left in the big tank. So now i have lost 2 great American Cichlid breeding
pairs all due to this one pair of Red Terror's and they truly are Terror's
as you can see.
The surviving fry from the first
spawn are now doing well, i have about 50 fry left and the largest is about
1" after 3 months, like i said the spawn that killed the female was never
fertilized by the male and i put this down to him not being ready for another
spawn due to the first spawn still swimming round in his tank. If you have
any Questions about my Festae experience please don't hesitate to contact
me at bigguapote@hotmail.com or on ICQ with 7647385
By Tim Bardsley - Smith
