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Has anyone ever had freshwater damsels? I am taking care of a couple of them for a couple of months and have no experience with them. What ph? any salt added to the water?

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If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished.

The three species I know of (there are probably many more), all are related to marine fish , and have some behaviour similar to some cichlids and although spending much time in freshwater will probably need at least some time in brackish water for some of the time, possibly especially around breeding. Never kept one personally, or even known of someone who has, so Im no authority on this.

Neopomacentrus taeniurus, info here

http://filaman.ifm-geomar.de/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=5705

Stegastes otophorus,

http://fishbase.sinica.edu.tw/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=12515

and Pomacentrus taeniometopon

http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=10280


These fish are part of the pomacentridae family, despite their freshwater proclivities.


ring any bells?

I got them home and in a QT tank, the male isn't looking very well. They were rescued from a fishroom, the owner had died and the fish were ....well just left there.

These fish are about 3 to 4 inches long, dorsal spines, they look like a cross between a cichlid and a discus. They are brown but with marking like a discus.

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If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished.

Can you post a picture of the fish so we can identify it? Your description doesn't sound much like the fish Git linked to.

If it is a true damsel though, and you are sure of it, it would be best to acclimate them to brackish (and possibly fully marine) conditions for their long-term health. No damselfish are truly freshwater fish, and even the species in Git's first link needs to spend at least some of its time in brackish water.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Sounds like a ram , or another apistogramma ,possibly an acara or something, will defo need piccie to id that one.

Another possibility raises its head here upon reading this.

There is a brackish water Cichlid called Etroplus suratensis, the Green Chromide, which prefers 10% marine strength water. It's also fairly large, an adult will reach 10 inches in length.

Here's a page with a photo of the fish (unfortunately the text is Dutch).

Care details are summarised here.

If this is your fish, then you'll have quite some fun keeping them. Perhaps the reason they're not doing well in quarantine is because you've inadvertetly transferred them in a hurry to water of a different salinity to that in which they were being kept - without accurate information on the original home, it's all too easy to do.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I have raised the salinity and they are looking better this morning. I will have to try to get the digital camera from work on Monday. They have the body like Cala pic but the markings are different, like a discus. Very pretty fish. It is definately not an acara... I have several of those, or a severum or a JD.

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If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished.

Do your fishes lack vertical stripes?

Hmm, interesting ... have to go trawling around for this one ...

Would it be this fish perchance?

Only that is a close relative, Etroplus canarensis, which is purely freshwater in the wild and extremely rare in the hobby - if you have these, then first, you have a very valuable rarity on your hands (Practical Fishkeeping magazine describes them in detail, and also cites the kind of price you'd be looking at to buy them in a dealer's - that's around $60 per fish!) and one that may reach 8 inches in length given sufficient tank space!

Just for comparison's sake, take a look on this page] http://www.ornamentalfishes.org/html/braksihfamily.htm[/link] at the Orange Chromide, Etroplus maculatus, which is very variable in colour (many wild specimens are olive, and the orange form is a selectively bred colour form. [link=This page]http://www.aquahobby.com/orange.html[/link] has some information on it, not all of which is reliable (it says for example that Etroplus maculatus is the only Asian Cichlid, while both its relations Etroplus suratensis and Etroplus canarensis are Asian too). However, as far as I am aware, Etroplus is the only Asian Cichlid Genus, and [link=The Cichlid Room's Genera Catalogue Page agrees with me, and since this is compiled by some of the world's leading experts on Cichlids, such as Dr Paul Loiselle and Juan Miguel Artigas Azas, I am not going to argue with them!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002