Speaking of Birthdays...

[DarkDiscus]

All,

As of April 12th, this fellow turns 10 years old. Actually I have owned him for 10 years, so he's really a bit older...

[Ryan]

Ten years old and still kicking... Amazing! Are you gonna have a party for him? Will your wife understand? hehehe..

Ryan

[DarkDiscus]

Ryan,

Definitely he gets a party! He's part of the family. Sandra really likes him and talks to him daily!

Funny story: The other day I was feeding him and his cohort and forgot to feed on both sides of the tank... Bighead can eat A LOT, but he stuffed his mouth full of a cube of frozen bloodworms, so he couldn't get at the other cube. Instead of letting the other fish eat the cube, he knocked it out of the tank. I put the cube back in and he knocked it out again. I put it in again and he had swallowed his cube by then, so he ate the other cube too...

He has done all sorts of interesting things over the year from trying to attack the vacuum cleaner to jumping out of the tank to get food before I dropped it in to scaring my mom to death and dousing her with a gallon of water...

John

[brewmaster15]

Happy Birthday Mr. Bighead!

Having seen this fish in person, I can tell you he's one cantankerous old man! :)

-al

[Moon]

What type of chiclid is Bighead. Looks like a G.Balzani.

[DarkDiscus]

It's amazing that this was first posted a year and a half ago... Bighead still looks the same, though he is still mad at me about the move to the new house back in August.

He is a Nicaraguan cichlid. I believe the current scientific name is Theraps nicaraguensis, but I could be out of the loop.

I bought him and 5 others back in April of 1993 after a snowstorm and 3 day power outage did in all my fish at the time. I got 2 pairs out of the 6 fish and sold the 2nd pair. Bighead and his girlfriend produced something like 2,000 babies for me of which I sold most to LFS and gave some to friends. She died back in 2002. He's retired.

;D

John

PS. When he got the name his head was twice as big. As he has reached old age, his bump has been shrinking - less hormones I guess!

[henryD]

John,

that is great. I use to have a silver arrowana that had so much personality. He killed himself the other day by knocking the temp sensor out of the tank and the tank went to 100 degrees. Everyone at home was upset.

Mr Bighead looks alot like the cichlids they are using to create the flowerhorn fish that was all the craze a bit back.

Henry

[DarkDiscus]

Henry,

The Nicaraguans are in the same complex as those guys, I believe.

Flowerhorns always looked like trimaculatus (major SPELLING check on that one!) to me. I think they are darn ugly and if they are, in fact, hybrids, I like them even less.

I still prefer them to the hideous parrotfish (especially the dyed ones), however!

Sorry to hear about your arrowana, they can live forever as well.

John

[DarkDiscus]

I forgot to mention this, but one of the places I used to sell Bighead's kids to back in the mid-late 90s has a tank of Nicaraguans for sale. I wonder if someone was breeding the fish I sold there.

They certainly aren't common to see in LFS.

John