Want me to break my leg? lolAh, Jeez...excuses, excuses...you sound almost like @The Masked Shadow now...
Red Wolf!
- Thread starter jjohnwm
- Start date
The wolf has been eating greedily and is definitely growing well; I'm estimating 5 inches. Some fish are tough to measure because they are hidden away and don't show themselves completely; others are difficult because whenever you hold a ruler up to the tank, they are lunging at your hand, facing you full on and making measurement difficult. The wolf is in that category.
Orange colouration is continuing to increase; dorsal fin is gorgeous and usually held fully spread. The wolf gets a couple pellets a day, along with one or two grasshoppers, which are in season right now and available in huge numbers; I'm thinking of freezing some for him for the winter. I offer him an earthworms whenever I can find them as well, but not a lot of them around. My pond is full of hatchling Rosy Reds, most around an inch long now, and in a few weeks when I shut it down for the winter there will be a thousand or so of those in the freezer for him as well.
The fish still spends a fair bit of time in hiding, but if hungry will come out immediately for a laser pointer dot or usually even if I simply come down the stairs into the basement. He is still being fed every day, which I will cut back to every other day when he is a bit bigger. He continues to utilize hard objects and substrate to help push large prey items into his mouth for swallowing; close observation has shown that he is not actually striking his mouth against the object in question, but rather just the grasshopper.
I like this fish. I've begun my end-of-season sell-off/trade-in of surplus fish from my basement, making room to bring the outdoor cichlids back inside. The wolf made the cut and is still here, so he's safe until next fall. I suspect that by then he will have been granted permanent full-time status.
Orange colouration is continuing to increase; dorsal fin is gorgeous and usually held fully spread. The wolf gets a couple pellets a day, along with one or two grasshoppers, which are in season right now and available in huge numbers; I'm thinking of freezing some for him for the winter. I offer him an earthworms whenever I can find them as well, but not a lot of them around. My pond is full of hatchling Rosy Reds, most around an inch long now, and in a few weeks when I shut it down for the winter there will be a thousand or so of those in the freezer for him as well.
The fish still spends a fair bit of time in hiding, but if hungry will come out immediately for a laser pointer dot or usually even if I simply come down the stairs into the basement. He is still being fed every day, which I will cut back to every other day when he is a bit bigger. He continues to utilize hard objects and substrate to help push large prey items into his mouth for swallowing; close observation has shown that he is not actually striking his mouth against the object in question, but rather just the grasshopper.
I like this fish. I've begun my end-of-season sell-off/trade-in of surplus fish from my basement, making room to bring the outdoor cichlids back inside. The wolf made the cut and is still here, so he's safe until next fall. I suspect that by then he will have been granted permanent full-time status.
I was doing some fishroom puttering this morning and realized something which led me to dig up this ^ post from awhile back. When @Deadeye mentioned snails, I remember responding that the Wolf paid no attention to them...but I now realize that there are no snails in his tank, and I can't remember the last time I saw one in there. I have a thriving colony of Pond and Red Ramshorn snails in all my tanks which I encourage and nurture; none here.
I like snails; they are a great clean-up crew for fish that might be messy eaters, as the Red Wolf can be with things like krill (which often shed small pieces while he is busy shaking the crap out of them!
). They likely eat some algae, I like the looks of them, and if they start getting out of hand I thin them out by feeding the surplus to my Musk Turtle. They have no downside IMHO.Well...the Wolf must be a snail eater. There is no other possible explanation for the absence of snails in his heavily planted tank; it is part of a system that incorporates a couple hundred gallons of water in addition to his 40breeder, and the other tank hosts a nice population of them. I have never seen the Wolf even deign to notice a snail, but he's either eating 'em or keeping them captive in some hidden dungeon in his tank. There are several concrete drainage pipe sections in the tank that could be used as snail torture chambers, hidden from casual observation.
I'm going to skip feeding for a couple of days and then drop in a nice juicy Ramshorn to see what's what.
As a matter of fact, I’ve had the exact same experience. I figured it was because the tank was not properly cycled when I put the snails in, but I may have to rethink that if you’re having the same experience.I was doing some fishroom puttering this morning and realized something which led me to dig up this ^ post from awhile back. When @Deadeye mentioned snails, I remember responding that the Wolf paid no attention to them...but I now realize that there are no snails in his tank, and I can't remember the last time I saw one in there. I have a thriving colony of Pond and Red Ramshorn snails in all my tanks which I encourage and nurture; none here.
I like snails; they are a great clean-up crew for fish that might be messy eaters, as the Red Wolf can be with things like krill (which often shed small pieces while he is busy shaking the crap out of them!
Well...the Wolf must be a snail eater. There is no other possible explanation for the absence of snails in his heavily planted tank; it is part of a system that incorporates a couple hundred gallons of water in addition to his 40breeder, and the other tank hosts a nice population of them. I have never seen the Wolf even deign to notice a snail, but he's either eating 'em or keeping them captive in some hidden dungeon in his tank. There are several concrete drainage pipe sections in the tank that could be used as snail torture chambers, hidden from casual observation.
I'm going to skip feeding for a couple of days and then drop in a nice juicy Ramshorn to see what's what.
A few ponds and rams here and there, but barely a fraction of what I started with.
I did see him eyeing a snail a few weeks ago just like a puffer would. I don’t recall if he attempted to eat it at all, but it was definitely interested…then he saw me and promptly began begging for food.
They really will eat anything. Recently I poured 100+ daphnia in there to start a pseudo-culture, thinking that in any other tank they’d all get eaten (and were too small to be on the wolf’s radar. I haven’t seen a single one since…
Really sucks because my tap has high phosphates, so algae is basically a fact of life and with no algae eaters my plants are smothered.
So my last post was Sunday; I fed the Red Wolf a large grasshopper on Monday, and nothing since then; today is Friday. He is hungry; I would not carelessly dangle my finger in that tank. This morning I opened the corner of the lid very carefully to prevent jumping, and dropped in a couple Red Ramshorn snails varying in size from 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch shell diameter. Nothing; no reaction whatsoever. He was hovering menacingly beneath the surface in that corner, obviously grumpy after a couple days of fasting...but the snails were completely ignored. I left them and they did their level best to snail-scurry into the plants.
Maybe he only eats snails at night? Sleep-eating?
More observation required.
Maybe he only eats snails at night? Sleep-eating?
More observation required.
They ranged from slightly smaller than a Massivore pellet to slightly larger; well within his easy-to-swallow range. And he shows no hesitation grabbing a grasshopper or earthworm far larger, usually swallowing it whole, sometimes dismantling it by biting and shaking. I can't explain it. This is the longest that I have fasted him since shortly after I got him; if he were ever going to eat a snail, now should have been the time.
Man, this fish can be frustrating sometimes.
The Red Wolf has been in the same 40breeder since I got him. It had an assortment of wood, pipes, stones, Java Moss, Duckweed, Hornwort, Guppy Grass, etc...it wasn't "decor", it was just a tangled pile of debris that provided plenty of secluded cover into which the fish could disappear when it wanted to. Not a typical display tank by any means; really, none of mine are.
But sometimes you get a tank that is just the perfect mix of nutrients, light and water conditions to support a healthy growth of algae, but without having the stuff take over. This tank was one of those lucky ones. The plants grew, there was lots of algae on the wood and pipes, but I rarely ever needed to clean the inside glass. The only frequent maintenance needed was the weekly removal of 90% of the Duckweed. The tank itself was plumbed in with a 200-ish gallon stock tank, which contained filtration, heating, etc. so I really didn't need to go into the tank itself very often. Even water changes, of about 80-90% once weekly, were done in the big tank, so the water level never even changed in the small one.
But, the thick tangle of cover, while perfect for the fish when it was 2.5 inches, became less so as it approached 6 inches or more. Just too much cover, too many hidey-holes into which it could no longer fit. Time for a change. And I really didn't like the bare glass bottom.
So I drained the tank down to a few inches, removed almost all the wood and stone, replaced the pipework with a few pieces of much-larger diameter drainage pipe, ruthlessly thinned out the greenery and...perhaps the most intrusive part of the job...I laid ceramic tiles down on the bottom.
Now, anybody who keeps much Java Moss knows what that tank looks like now...absolute crap! The delicate, lacy fronds of the moss, as well as the bright green fur of algae, do not take well to disturbance. It will take awhile to regain its natural beauty.
But the worst part is that the Wolf has once again gone underground. When I first got him, I didn't see him at all for literally weeks; he eventually became very bold and outgoing, but it took time and he could still decide to vanish without a trace on a regular basis. I applied this Scorched Earth re-decorating plan 5 days ago, and...yep, you guessed it...he was not seen again until just this morning, when he lunged out of his lair the moment I entered the room, demanding food as if nothing had happened.
I'm tellin' ya, he's lucky that he's cute...
The Red Wolf has been in the same 40breeder since I got him. It had an assortment of wood, pipes, stones, Java Moss, Duckweed, Hornwort, Guppy Grass, etc...it wasn't "decor", it was just a tangled pile of debris that provided plenty of secluded cover into which the fish could disappear when it wanted to. Not a typical display tank by any means; really, none of mine are.
But sometimes you get a tank that is just the perfect mix of nutrients, light and water conditions to support a healthy growth of algae, but without having the stuff take over. This tank was one of those lucky ones. The plants grew, there was lots of algae on the wood and pipes, but I rarely ever needed to clean the inside glass. The only frequent maintenance needed was the weekly removal of 90% of the Duckweed. The tank itself was plumbed in with a 200-ish gallon stock tank, which contained filtration, heating, etc. so I really didn't need to go into the tank itself very often. Even water changes, of about 80-90% once weekly, were done in the big tank, so the water level never even changed in the small one.
But, the thick tangle of cover, while perfect for the fish when it was 2.5 inches, became less so as it approached 6 inches or more. Just too much cover, too many hidey-holes into which it could no longer fit. Time for a change. And I really didn't like the bare glass bottom.
So I drained the tank down to a few inches, removed almost all the wood and stone, replaced the pipework with a few pieces of much-larger diameter drainage pipe, ruthlessly thinned out the greenery and...perhaps the most intrusive part of the job...I laid ceramic tiles down on the bottom.
Now, anybody who keeps much Java Moss knows what that tank looks like now...absolute crap! The delicate, lacy fronds of the moss, as well as the bright green fur of algae, do not take well to disturbance. It will take awhile to regain its natural beauty.
But the worst part is that the Wolf has once again gone underground. When I first got him, I didn't see him at all for literally weeks; he eventually became very bold and outgoing, but it took time and he could still decide to vanish without a trace on a regular basis. I applied this Scorched Earth re-decorating plan 5 days ago, and...yep, you guessed it...he was not seen again until just this morning, when he lunged out of his lair the moment I entered the room, demanding food as if nothing had happened.
I'm tellin' ya, he's lucky that he's cute...