Quick update on this little wolf. He has grown considerably, just under 5 inches at the moment and much chunkier than the emaciated state in which I originally got him. He continues to eat just about anything offered, but his main diet consists of assorted varieties of carnivorous-diet pellets, earthworms and insects (clumsy grasshoppers and slow deer flies, mostly...I am improving the bloodlines by culling...
).
His colour has been steadily improving and I think he has potential to be a fairly colourful specimen. More and more orange is appearing along his lateral dark stripe, and there is some colour spangling in the unpaired fins as well when seen in good light. His demeanour continues to worsen; I tried placing a single Hoplo cat in with him a few weeks ago, and he ignored it at first but eventually became quite belligerent and started to harass the cat, which I removed. Today I experimented with another larger Hoplo, an inch longer than the wolf and likely more than twice his mass. I floated it in a glass jar in his tank, and he attacked it immediately; never even bothered releasing the cat from the jar, as it was obviously not going to work. He will be flying solo from here on.
This is a rarity for me; actually got a recognizable pic: