I want to buy parrot chilchid
- Thread starter professorjimjam
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Just to be clear, BPs are not a real, or actual legitimate cichlid species.
They are a man made, some times more or less deformed mutation created in Asia.
They are a man made, some times more or less deformed mutation created in Asia.
In my experience BPs are "high ceiling low floor fish". On one hand you get one of the most personable cichlids that will play around with you. But on the other hand you get a constantly bullied fish that can't fight for itself nor compete with other fish for food.
Hence, I'd recommend putting them in species only tanks.
My personal verdict is that there's many other cichlids with similar personableness as a parrot and it really sucks watching them "suffer" from not being able to defend themselves and not being able to get food fast enough.
Hence, I'd recommend putting them in species only tanks.
My personal verdict is that there's many other cichlids with similar personableness as a parrot and it really sucks watching them "suffer" from not being able to defend themselves and not being able to get food fast enough.
I do agree the overseas obsession with deformation is weird, especially the tatooing and tail clipping (heart parrots make me angry) which is KNOWN to decrease the lifespan of the fish and make them more susceptible to disease. It's as bad as the maiming of dogs by ear cropping and tail chopping. It's human vanity and nothing else.
My parrots are the only fish in my keep who never got ick or velvet, bacterial infections or anything else even in contaminated tanks. Members here have their favorite fish too but I see no point in the rants...it won't change anything. If I say arowanas are ugly and boring asf, with drop eye and health problems, will that stop people from getting them? No, and it shouldn't. They might get a beautiful, long lived specimen. There was a member on Parrotcichlids.com who had a female get to 13 yrs I believe. That site was my source guide before getting back in the hobby.
Nothing in nature is 'pure' so no point in that tip. Humans categorize species into groups for ease of identification. Habitats change over time and hybrids occur naturally. Who's to say the species we think are 'pure' aren't the result of hybrids in the distant past? Land masses have moved and so have the oceans and waterways. Areas once under water are now land. Evolution, the real deal. Not the cute systemic stuff packaged neatly for convenience.
So dig it, any serious fishkeeper has a short list
Get what you want
Take care of it to the best of your ability
Enjoy, appreciate, interact
Pretty simple, really. I'm convinced
duanes
was jumped in his sleep by a parrot and gummed on the leg.
I guarantee if you saw my bps nobody would say they suffer or don't get food. (mine range from 8 to almost 9 inches) Just give 'em the correct pellet size and they're fine. Aggression and attacks is why I had to place them in their own tanks. If they can't bite they ram fish...it's a common tactic. Of course they wouldn't last against a Butti and the like...but hardly just pushovers.
I just find it fascinating the preconceived notions about specific fish. Interesting discussion here. Seems like the word HYBRID gets people all:
My BP killed her male partner last year, after countless spawns, and several years of being together. An adult male carpintis that was 9-10”. Happened one day while I was at work, tore him up so bad that he never recovered. He could be a royal prick at times, so I couldn’t really blame her. Sometimes **** happens in a fish tank, even after years of cohabitation. This BP was not an easy target for any cichlid, pure or not.
Okay, stuff like that is so extreme that it's easy for us to agree on it. We all have our limits as to what is or is not acceptable, and if one goes far enough to either extreme eventually one gets into territory that everyone agrees is bad...although somebody is buying those things, so...?
Here's where you have entered into the No Man's Land where opinions differ. Some are correct (like mine...) and some are not (like...okay, I won't do that
). And that's okay, as long as no harm is done and everyone is happy to do their own thing. When you get to the point...and we are definitely at that point...where a significant percentage of the fish in a LFS are mysterious unknown hybrid mutts, developed as a result of breeding "projects" that basically consist of "Gee...this might be cool...", well, it still isn't necessarily dangerous, just confusing and potentially annoying to some. Fortunately, it isn't very likely that these man-made things are going to get back into the wild gene pool and pollute it...but if it does happen, it can quite literally breed "pure" species out of existence. A species can become extinct if there are no individuals left that do not have some mixed genealogy in their make-up. I haven't followed it closely, but at one point there was concern that the American Bison was technically becoming extinct simply because there were no pure wild-strain animals left; they all had some admixture of domestic cattle in their make-up, so they weren't really bison anymore.I chuckle when one of these gits'n'shiggles breeders earnestly proclaims "Oh, it's just an experiment; I would never let these Piranha X Pleco hybrids out of my house!" Please! For every one of them that thinks he is being responsible by taking that stance, there are likely dozens that don't even consider it.
And please, if you are going to defend mutts, do it honestly. Certainly many natural species that are considered "pure" species are the result of hybridization in the past; if the hybrid proved to be superior in some way that allowed it to compete with, or even out-compete, its ancestors then it survived and thrived...yep, just as you say, evolution. But evolution is powered by natural selection; the hybrid mutt only survives if it is somehow better suited to survive. Bubble-eyes and short-bodies and long-fins and other weird-ass critters like Parrots are the exact opposite of that; they are the result of un-natural selection. People looking to make a buck select the individuals to breed who show whatever goofy trait the breeder thinks will sell, despite the fact that most of these traits would sentence the thing to a short unhappy life in a natural setting. That's not evolution; it's devolution.
I admit that I am probably at the extreme.
One of the reasons I moved from the US is that it was getting more and more difficult to find real species
and decidiug to catch my own wild ones was getting to be "almost" my only opiion.
To me , any kind of designer fish are unwanted.
I don't care if its a designer lemon oscar, a blue gene JD, a mixed blood Vieja, a glow tetra, or a tattoed BP,
to me, all are fake fish., and are leading to the day when few if any real fish wil exist.
Luckily I'm at that pount when I'm so old, won't have to witness that ultimate decline
One of the reasons I moved from the US is that it was getting more and more difficult to find real species
and decidiug to catch my own wild ones was getting to be "almost" my only opiion.
To me , any kind of designer fish are unwanted.
I don't care if its a designer lemon oscar, a blue gene JD, a mixed blood Vieja, a glow tetra, or a tattoed BP,
to me, all are fake fish., and are leading to the day when few if any real fish wil exist.
Luckily I'm at that pount when I'm so old, won't have to witness that ultimate decline
Lol yeah I agree.
The reason I had this issue was probably because I kept my BP with faster cichlids for a time like mbuna, peacocks, salvini, and jewels etc.
However, a year ago I found a way to mitigate this issue which is to keep BPs with tetras that eat flake food while the BP has all the pellets to itself. I'm sure there's many other ways to keep a BP well fed too (bichirs, plecos, other smaller but not eatable-sized fish come to mind).
