Red Wolf!

[jjohnwm]

Well, hallelujah! I just got home from a work rotation, and of course one of the first things I did was check my tanks. The Red Wolf had polished off the first batch of guppies, as well as the additional 15 or 16 I had my wife drop in a couple weeks ago. She says that she hasn't seen a guppy in the tank for at least a week.

Thinking that this would be the perfect time to start switching him over to frozen and/or prepared foods, I thawed a couple of roughly inch-long krill this morning, broke them in half, and dropped two pieces in. Settling back into my fish room easy chair with a beer, I got comfortable and settled in to wait. I was prepared for a long period of sitting still and quiet, eyes peeled, hoping for a quick glimpse of the elusive wolf. Hah! Within only about 2 minutes, he appeared in the centre of the tank, immediately grabbed a chunk of krill and...dare I say it?...wolfed it down.

The second piece was a wee bit too big...I had overestimated his size, he is a bit under three inches total length. He seized the second piece, shook it vigorously, tore off a chunk and swallowed. The remaining fragment sunk to the bottom. To my surprise, he unhesitatingly ate that as well. I had expected that he would be reticent about eating non-living food at least at first, but it turned out to be an unfounded fear. Despite the nice little tummy bulge he was now sporting, I took a piece of freeze-dried krill, soaked it for a few minutes in a cup of water, tore off an appropriate-size piece...and he took that right away also!

The fish doesn't seem to have grown any noticeable amount in the past three weeks, strictly going from the memory of how he looked in the bag when I brought him home. He is definitely less skinny now, and his tail and fins are perfect. He carries them fully spread, including that nice flag-like dorsal and the large, roundish caudal; looks great. His colouration is pretty dull, a subdued light brownish with a darker, irregular longitudinal line, but there are definite flecks of orange starting to appear. Peru-sourced specimens are supposedly marked with orange on the belly as well; that's not evident yet, but so far he seems cichlid-like, i.e. starting out dull and colouring up as he ages rather than being colourful at first and becoming duller with age as many species of non-cichlid seem to do. I think he will be a looker.

I wasn't really planning on updating, thinking that the fish isn't rare and so there is little point in detailing his growth, but thebiggerthebetter made a convincing argument in another thread for the value of thread updates so I will try to do so here whenever anything interesting happens.

 

[MultipleTankSyndrome]

Hah! Within only about 2 minutes, he appeared in the centre of the tank, immediately grabbed a chunk of krill and...dare I say it?...wolfed it down.

This thread is killing me from laughter!

 

[Omrit]

While not really a "rare" fish there really is not a huge amount of information on them either. I think it is valuable to record findings on them for this reason.


As for coloration it should come later. I wouldn't worry over the growth rate either mine was 3 inches until suddenly he was 5.

 

[jjohnwm]

While not really a "rare" fish there really is not a huge amount of information on them either. I think it is valuable to record findings on them for this reason.


As for coloration it should come later. I wouldn't worry over the growth rate either mine was 3 inches until suddenly he was 5.

Yeah, the hints of salmon/orange along the central line seem to bode well for future colours.

As for size, I'm not actually worried, just a bit surprised. I've kept a lot of assorted predatory fish over the years, and most of them show astonishing growth during their earliest months if well fed. Combine that with my absence for a few weeks at a time on a semi-regular basis, and I am accustomed to getting home and being pleasantly surprised at how much this or that or the other fish has grown since last I saw them. That didn't happen here, but the fish was quite thin when I got him so part of that heavy food intake was just "catching up" to where he should be.

I would like to see a bit more size on him simply because feeding will be simpler for me, as I have lots of food items for him that are currently a little too large.

 

[jjohnwm]

The behaviour of this fish has changed so dramatically in just the past few days that I have modified my species-tank idea slightly. The wolf is very enthusiastic in his approach to food; any food item that is too large to be instantly swallowed whole is seized and shaken viciously to dismantle it into more bite-size morsels. With krill, either frozen or freeze-dried, this results in numbers of tiny pieces that are too small to attract his attention. Since the tank is too choked with Java Moss for me to easily spot and remove this debris, I introduced a Hoplo cat (Megalechis thoracata) from a small group that I have been raising up in another tank. I'm not normally one to give a fish a job...I consider it my responsibility to clean a tank...but the Hoplo is very industrious and was not satisfied with the few small sinking pellets I gave it last night. He's always on the prowl, so I think he'll be snarfing up krill remains nicely; I hope he comes to think of it as more a hobby rather than a job.

The wolf ignores the Hoplo completely, but of course the armoured cat is larger than he is so that's understandable. If in future this should change, perhaps when the wolf puts on some size, the Hoplo will rejoin his siblings.

The wolffish still spends a significant amount of time out of sight, but is now often on display patrolling the tank as well. He reacts aggressively and immediately to the introduction of food, so much so that I may have to be careful when feeding to prevent him from jumping out. I've never kept any species of wolffish before and it's much more active and interesting than I expected. I was using an infrared remote thermometer in my fishroom yesterday during a water change and he was chasing that red laser dot around like a drunken housecat. Great fun!

 

[Omrit]

Despite the one I kept being such a terror I think most reports put them in the "peaceful if it can't fit in mouth" category. If I had one again I would probably try it with some medium sized barbs at the very least.


I saw them show up on wetspot this week which is seriously tempting me.


Not my video, but I found this tank interesting:

 

[kno4te]

If you get it a smaller size and raise with other fish that can’t be eaten or bullied. Then it could work.

 

[Gunfleet]

I kept my red wolf with black skirt tetras, silver dollars, a few geos and some smaller plecos in a 125. No issues what so ever. model citizen, though I knew it might go psycho murder machine one day. I finally broke up the tank when I moved. I would do it agianif I found ar really colorful wolf.

 

[CrazyPhishMan]

seems they are never available in quantity, onesy twosey's... i want 6

 

[jjohnwm]

The local shop where I got this one usually receives 4 - 6 at a time, and they always seem to go quickly. I was lucky to grab this one last time they appeared.

Considering how aggressively it feeds, a tankful would be a sight to see at feeding time. I can imagine it degenerating into a piranha-style free-for-all; would hate to see a bunch of these with missing eyes, chewed-off fins, etc.

That video with just two of them in the same tank is interesting. One has more subdued colouration and is perhaps a wee bit smaller; sexual dimorphism, or just dominant/submissive? Don't forget, the video shows an apparently successful co-habitation...but we see only 80 seconds of it. What happened the next morning or next week...or next hour?

Plenty of folks trumpet how successfully they maintain a delicate situation like this, but when asked how long it has been going they check their watch... There's a big difference between "successful" and "not disastrous yet".