The girlfriends fault this one.

Ok , now as you might have read, I had a bit of an issue with the way people keep some cichlids, in particular with Uaru, small aquaria, underfeeding, overcrowding etc, tend to lead to suboptimal development and dwarfing, I did a thread on it. Thus.

http://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/modules/ ... id=166136#forumpost166136

Net result I have some Uaru are a bit small, but basically ive cracked it, and they are growing, though not as quickly as I'd like, but thats to be expected.

But, I got that beat.

Girlfriend goes out shopping comes back with a bag.
"For you" she says "See what you can do with it".

I peer in , and see this. (see pic bottom of post)


So no problem thinks I , baby severum, looks fairly healthy, perhaps a bit oddly proportioned, but strangely familiar somehow... then the brain starts to tick over.

"this isnt..."

"yes" she says, "this is the same batch of one of your sevvies, woman at the shop confirmed it, its the only batch shes had for over 9 months, dunno if it will live or die, but better with you than where it was, see what you can do."

"WTF" Ok , this photoshop mockup but the proportions are very accurate, obviously I cant put these two fish in the same tank. (See below cathie's.)

Cute little fish. I take it, it should be neither cute nor little. Tell us about it?

When I say this fish has a big brother, im not kiddin.

They literally are brothers.

Now thats dwarfed, both fish are at least 9 months old now. Scuse the photoshop trickery, but I cant put em side by side, the little one would get eaten.


Hope it grows....

Just to prove im not cheating, heres a pic with a laetacara dorsigeras bum in it, the severum, and one of the soon to be ex-dwarfed Uaru. Note the sevvie is actually smaller than the laetacara, and that the uaru have finally roughly doubled in size from the day I acquired them.

Holy flip flop!

So have i got this right, the little fish and the massive fish next to it our brothers and should be the same size!??!!!


What a huge difference in 9 months when fed correctly! How much do they eat? and how could the little fish survive so long when so severley stunted?

Paranoid now, gonna get the tape measure out for my fish!

Yup s'right, crazy isnt it?

How long? I dunno, but this one is lucky to be alive, as for how much they eat, well for the first three months of life they should basically eat as much as they want, cichlids usually arent compulsive feeders like goldies. I feed em three times a day as fry, twice a day as youngsters, basically as much as they can eat. My big sevvie there isnt even fat.

As for the little one ,I guess thats what you get when you give em the absolute bare minimum, a few fragments of flake maybe the cheapest nastiest cichlid food going. Sevvies should really get several dry foods, plus a whole range of frozen livefoods from week two of life, and he obviously never got that. He was skinny too, but a week of feeding has fixed that, hes starting to change shape.

Just goes to show, you can never tell how old a fish in a shop really is if theyre a bunch of miserable underfeeders. Personally I would never have believed a severum could be that small and still alive after 9 months. Imagine that translated into coldwater fish with a slower metabolism like goldies, no wonder so many people dont really realise when their fish are dwarfed.

is there a key with feeding all cichlids or does it vary species to species?

there is such a lot of warnings in not overfeeding fish due to affecting water quality that maybe this can lead to some underfeeding in home aquaria perhaps. I know i get paranoid wether im overfeeding.

Whats the best way to know whats not too much or too little?

How long you reckon it might take for little dude to catch up with his bro?

Are there any health symptoms showing with such dwarfism? Be very intresting to see the steps you take to turn him round and how you progress.

go a slap that shopkeeper that's ridicules inhumain shopkeeping and should be reported their is the proof plane and simple that their are not feeding significantly and selling unfit fish

Cichlid feeding does vary by species, obviously on the basic level there are carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores, but most cichlids are omnivores with "preferences". Very few fish in the cichlid groups have their feeeding activity accurately described by monotypic terms, most of the carnivores need a little fibre and trace vitamins and minerals from plants even if its a tiny percentage, and most of the herbivores and algal browsers will still opportunistically take eggs and fry of other species, capitalise on a corpse , or help them selves to some microfauna, the odd snail, tiny amphipods and shrimp etc.

Ie: 1) german rams are omnivores that are a micropredator, will scavenge to a degree, and have a heavy fondness for insect larvae, but they still need the balance of a decent quality cichlid pellet, many apistogramma and nannacara are the same. These are not species with which you should become flake reliant, or use purely frozen livefoods and protien sources, many will indeed wane if denied the livefoods. Mosdt of these guys at this scale have a metabolism so rapid, its actually quite hard to overfeed them, but given the amount of fatty worms they can eat, caution is advised, but I would say on average most captive rams and apistos are kept too lean in shops.

2) Oscars - often listed as a carnivore, but they arent a pure carnivore.Sure they will take fish, almost anything living smallenough to kill and swalow, but they still need the nutritional balancing of a good cichlid staple.These are the fish perhaps most likely to become noticeably obese if overfed. Their growth catchup is very fast, you'd have to be an idiot to actually manage to dwarf one of these dietarily, by far the most common problem is monotypic feedings of only a few species of fish or meat, they grow fast, but get very susceptible to disease, and many are so badly formed with the lack of balance they become immuno supressed, and very likely to have disease issues. Their major dwarfing factor is small tanksizes tbh.

3) The true generalists like severum,festivum, convicts etc, they will eat as much veg as animal protien , theirs can be an almost 50/50 split, if they dont get it , digestion will not be normal and the vitamin balance usually terrible, grow and longevity will be affected. This fish need supreme diet variety. You offer the protien sources once a day, but they can browse veg matter several times in the course of a day.

4) Uaru can basically eat anything that a severum eats, but prefer a higher margin of veg matter, synspilums etc do well on a similar diet. Were talking 75% veg content in the diet as adults, though they may pack in the animal protien to begin with. When your getting to this level of cichlid , food in one for or another, even if its only a bit of low calorie blanched lettuce floating around the tank should actually be available most of the time, if only for effective digestive transit, most arent compulsive feeders and will take what they need. As you can imagine , somewhere like the amazon has no shortage of available plant matter. They can be allowed to browse on foods regularly during the day as long as the fat content is watched.

5) Laetacara, are again omnivores, they will eat most stuff, but they are a little more predatory than the rams, preferring at least 60-70% of their diet to be animal based, much the same is true for blue acaras, green terrors, , but a lort of these guys arent fussy. flake doesnt really suit them, the pretty much only pick at veg when they fancy a change.Its these sorts of fish that the carnivore pellets and cichlid pellet mix works the best for, they love their supplemental meaty foods, but of all the cichlids, dietarily these are probably some of the easiest to cater for. Most happy on a once a day feed.

6) The rift cichlids,( while every style of feeding is represented its the little guys that cause many problems) specifically relating to the smaller malawi, a lot of them are algal browsers and at the same time opportunists. The browse and they take what comes, fry, eggs, etc. For them you need the malawi pellets, blanched veggies, and the occassional livefood treat, overdoing the livefoods and the protien content of the diet tends to lead to hepatic lipidosis and transit issues, liver damage and dropsy, though for some odd reason rift cichlid keepers often prefer to refer to it aas malawi bloat. Basically its dietarily induced dropsy. You have to seriously watch the fat and protein content of the diet, but if that is controlled and the diet kept failry lean they can feed almost ad libitum. Another fish for whom the statement "all they can eat in 2 minutes" doesnt stand true. Most will prefer small amounts fed several times daily.

7) The bottom feeders. Geos,firemouths,eartheaters, some of the bottom feeding rifts. These are all fish that while considered generalist omnivores, sifters, and scavengers generally need some livefoods in the diet, and some crustacean, worm and shellfish meat for decent solid growth, they generally also tend to be fond of the lifefoods. Their remit is really one of carnivore/omnivore. Secondary trace hormones in diet often regulate their breeding, and their condition and growth, like many catfish, if denied these sources , sexual maturity is late coming, infertility and mate acceptance can be a problem. They also like softer foods, things that have broken down a little over time, so its best to reduce the amount of competition they have for food, so that they can feed in a failrly leisurely way without the other fishin the tank becoming hideously obese, and small foods that sink and soften and can be sifted out over several hours will be loved. There are benefits to scavenging in this manner, not least because of the massive increase in b vitamin complexes that comes with partial decomposition.


8) The specialists, well scale eaters and specialist fin eaters are probably best not considered for aquaria anyway, and there are a few that specialise in shellfish, but youll not find them often in shops. Look into their needs as you get them, most will need a significant variety even within their specialisation, so if one was a mollusc or shellfish eater, you would still give them a huge range of species to eat if at all possible.


One thing they all have in common though, is fast maturity, and radical growth from young, and with that in mind the yound should be seen to show a progressive growth rate without underfeeding until they basically hit young adult size, perhaps a half to a third of their total size potential, but nonetheless its a stage of adulthood, and most cichlids reach it in anything from 6 -12 months.

You would expect for example, a ram to be full size in 6-8 months, a severum into a half of its adult size within a year, an oscar should be half grown in 6-8 months, most malawis arent dissimilar. Angels should be 6 inches tall within a year.Blue acaras are full grown in a year and would be half grown in 6 months. Nearly all of them mature quicky, and if they dont then you have to start looking at factors like water quality and relative o2 saturation, the quality of the diet, the stocking density and the tanksize.

Hope that helps you get a hook on it. For practical purposes most cichlids should be capable of breeding in 6 months to a year,ie, have reached sexual maturity and full colouration and adult behaviour, and be within 50% of maximum adult size ranges , and if not, they probably have some catching up to do. It varies a lot, but a feature of almost all cichlids is rapid early maturation, even if they do then slow down, and cruise gently to maximum sizes after that over the next few years.

If you wanna know something about a specific species, just ask.

Hence a severum at 9 months and an inch and a half being a little shocking. Should be 6 inch plus sexually mature, and in full colour- like its big bro there!

Ultimately if people are underfeeding because their tanksize and filtration cant handle it- they need to upgrade! Its just like with the oxydoras, if I hadnt overequipped and had pro3 filters, i would never have been able to bring them back so fast without a major tank crash.Fish shops overstocking in relation to their systems ability to cope does have dire consequences. There is only one answer to people who wont feed their fish enough on water quality grounds.

"get a bigger tank and filter then nitwit, stop pushing the minimums, it aint clever"

Trouble is the beginners perspective, small tanks small sponge filter. If you want to feed cichlids right you need a decent filter, by common standards to "overfilter" with lots of biomedia rather than low performance sponges, and have decent volume, and dont miss those water change dates, and hoover up regularly.