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Stomatepia mongo

Wow the color is impressive on these silvery fish!! Great pics! About how old are they?
 
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They really are a nice looking specimen. Never seen them outside of this thread. Thanks for sharing.
 
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Wow the color is impressive on these silvery fish!! Great pics! About how old are they?
Thanks.
I don't know the age. I guess less than a year.
They are slowly showing more black in their colours. When I feed them they go to fully silver within a second. The black takes a while to come back.
 
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I recently moved them to the living room tank which had no fish for a while.
Oh my wife was pissed. Such brown, ugly fish in the living room. I might have to buy another 150 gallon tank...

In addition, a while ago a friend brought me an adult sure female from the same breeder. It had a nice round body shape like females full of eggs should have.
Now the "female" and one of my fish dropped their tubes and I am not sure anymore about the bigger fish being a female. The white and black pattern also looks more male to me and it became way leaner.
I hope they spawn and I can observe it. I think thats the only way to figure out their true gender.

 
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Super Cichlids in Dover, Delaware has a wild breeding group of S. mongo and sells the F1 quite reasonably.

Sexing them is similar to S. pindu: Males are thinner and more elongate. Females are thicker and wider.

When they breed, the females get a visible large square tube and the males has a smaller angular notch.

Also like S. pindu, the holding females will spit the fry instantly when caught.
 
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They're harem breeders and don't pair bond. A single male can (and will) breed with a whole group of females.

I recently moved them to the living room tank which had no fish for a while.
Oh my wife was pissed. Such brown, ugly fish in the living room. I might have to buy another 150 gallon tank...

In addition, a while ago a friend brought me an adult sure female from the same breeder. It had a nice round body shape like females full of eggs should have.
Now the "female" and one of my fish dropped their tubes and I am not sure anymore about the bigger fish being a female. The white and black pattern also looks more male to me and it became way leaner.
I hope they spawn and I can observe it. I think thats the only way to figure out their true gender.

 
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Reactions: Milingu
I think the body shape can be misleading. At least when I look at the tubes the thinner fish seems to be a female and the rounder fish seems to be a male. A quite fat male.
That also matches with the colour patterns the breeder described. Before spawning the males show a white area above the anal fin.