12-26-06 - time for updates and some pictures!
Batch I - 87 days old now. When I returned home today I found one of them in the filtration...thought we had lost another one. It seems that the two largest (spotty and stripey) are fighting an aweful lot, and in the process it looks like they may be causing irrepairable damage to their mouths, causing the "pug face" look that can be found in some tank raised clowns. I've read about this, especially with Maroon Clowns, and in looking at the pictures now it definitely seems that this fighting has taken a toll, especially on spotty. Time will tell if this is "temporary" or "permenant" damage that they're causing to each other, but the bottom line is that in looking at these recent photos, there does appear to be damage which is likely directly the result of the constant mouth tugging between these two fish.
Here are the most recent pics of Batch I!
Spotty's left side
Spotty's Right Side, Stripey's Left Side
Again, Spotty's left side
Runty's left side, again Spotty's right side
Runty's right side partially in view, Stripey's right side, Spotty's left side
Spotty's right side
Batch III - Batch III is now 60 days old. The most interesting observation, especially between batches I and III, is that with both batches consisting of 3 siblings, in each batch there are 2 larger fish that constantly battle and 1 smaller fish that is almost completely left alone. Here's a current look at the 2 larger fish in Batch III.
I guess the biggest thing I'm learning so far on the Onyx Percs is that raising small batches *may* result in babies doing damage to each other early on that can't be fixed (as can be the case with Maroons)...we'll see how Batch VI progresses...(maybe an update on them later). If what's happening in Batch I occurs again in Batch III, I think we'll have learned something useful (i.e. you have to keep them crowded). I *MAY* try to put a stop to some of this by mixing Batch III into Batch I...we'll see.
That's it for now!
Matt