# Thorichthys Meeki (Firemouth)



## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

Hi guys,

Firstly, hello  I am new to this forum and hope to get valuable information from you vastly knowledgeable people 

I am hoping one of you experts can help me sex my two firemouths. I am non the wiser right not, and it is hard to tell.

Both seem to enjoy each others company, and with my experience before, I was under the impression that males will not tolerate each other too well. What suggests to me that I have a pairing is because they are rarely apart. However, to look at, I cannot tell much difference right now. Both are 2-3 inches in size, but one has slightly more colour than the other.

I have included a video and some photos here, to see if you can see the difference.
















Any help with this would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for now,
Chris


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

Doh - Sorry, this should have gone in CA, not SA.


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## adevoid1 (Sep 16, 2013)

From the pictures it seems as if you have a male and female. Males usually have long pointed fins where as the females have more rounded fins. I might be 
wrong. Also from experience the males tend to have a little more bright colors.


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

adevoid1 said:


> From the pictures it seems as if you have a male and female. Males usually have long pointed fins where as the females have more rounded fins. I might be
> wrong. Also from experience the males tend to have a little more bright colors.


That would be awesome. I will need to remove my krib I imagine. She bred recently, but killed the male and ate her fry so that didnt work too well. She is now kicking the **** out of the Yoyo loach. Guess she isn't too happy in there anymore.


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## CjCichlid (Sep 14, 2005)

T. meeki are difficult to sex, especially at that size. Both males and females will have elongated fins so that really isn't an accurate way to sex them.

There is no way to say for certain but from the way they are hanging around together you may very well have a male and female. From my experience males will have a longer "forehead" so if I was to take a guess, I'd say in the last pic the one on the left is female and right is male. Again, this is only a "best guess" and you'll need to give them time to mature to sex them accurately.


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

CjCichlid said:


> T. meeki are difficult to sex, especially at that size. Both males and females will have elongated fins so that really isn't an accurate way to sex them.
> 
> There is no way to say for certain but from the way they are hanging around together you may very well have a male and female. From my experience males will have a longer "forehead" so if I was to take a guess, I'd say in the last pic the one on the left is female and right is male. Again, this is only a "best guess" and you'll need to give them time to mature to sex them accurately.


Thanks for the info. Do they grow particularly quickly? I say they are currently about 2 inches in size (how old roughly would that make them?).

By the way, you may notice that I have them in currently with Neon tetras. I am not sure if a FM will eventually eat Neons or not (I assume so, being a mid sized cichlid), but I am going to remove them at some point in the future anyway :thumb:


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## FedEXguy (Feb 24, 2005)

If I had to guess, I'd say you have a male and female, with the male on right in the last pic. But, as others have said, it's too early to be certain on that.
As for their growth, it's hard to say because it depends on a lot of conditions. I can say they aren't at the top or bottom of the scale for growth speed and they are likely 6 months old at least, probably more. I can also say that as far as the neons go, it's not a given that they'll eat them, but I don't know your tank size. I can see that it's well-planted, so that's good for the neons escaping. And of the firemouths I had, none would chase down a fish to make a meal of it. You can always take the neons out if you notice one go missing.


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

FedEXguy said:


> If I had to guess, I'd say you have a male and female, with the male on right in the last pic. But, as others have said, it's too early to be certain on that.
> As for their growth, it's hard to say because it depends on a lot of conditions. I can say they aren't at the top or bottom of the scale for growth speed and they are likely 6 months old at least, probably more. I can also say that as far as the neons go, it's not a given that they'll eat them, but I don't know your tank size. I can see that it's well-planted, so that's good for the neons escaping. And of the firemouths I had, none would chase down a fish to make a meal of it. You can always take the neons out if you notice one go missing.


Thanks for the info :thumb:

Yes they are in a fairly well planted tank so they have some get away. So far they have not shown any attention to any other fish, apart from the krib, which seems to have a go at them now and again and they retaliate. They are in a 48 US gal tank (180 litres). It is somewhat heavily stocked at the moment, with intentions of rehoming the krib soon, as well as moving the two Apistogramma sp. steel blue and the cardinal tetras to their own smaller tank.

That will leave me with the 2 firemouths, 2 german blue rams, 4 yoyo loach, 1 tiger plec, 1 bristle nose plec, and 18 neon tetras (still a little overstocked one would say)

Water quality isn't too much of an issue with me, as I do 3-4 x30% water changes per week so hopefully they will grow fast anyway.


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## skurj (Oct 30, 2011)

I have a pair of thoricthys ellioti in with some cherry barbs. I used to have 3 more cherry barbs.. 2 of them were sickly and my largest ellioti ate them both, only to die a month later from whatever illness (I think internal parasite) the barbs had.
Of the remaining pair, the largest managed to catch a barb about 3 weeks ago, took him a day or 2 to eat it in the end. 
My cherry barbs are bigger than your neons, though my male ellioti is also around 4.5"


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## FedEXguy (Feb 24, 2005)

I've never kept ellioti, but I've had a rotation of meeki. I had a few in a 20 Long (that was really overstocked) with neons and black neons and none were ever touched. There were cherry barbs in there too, but something killed them, and now I'm wondering if thorichthys hate cherry barbs :?


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## CjCichlid (Sep 14, 2005)

Or maybe they just like cherries? :wink:


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

It's funny you should say that. I was thinking of getting barbs and removing the neons at one point..... probably would have got the standard tiger barbs thought but because they are notorious for fin nipping I decided against them...


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## MonteSS (Dec 8, 2008)

Only guessing that they are a pair or two females because Thorichthys males are very aggressive bullies IME.

IME barbs go well with them. Get at least 6 though. Only nipping I have seen is amongst themselves. Get black ruby barbs if you can find them. Males turn a real nice purple color.

...Bill


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

Well I have replaced the tetra with barbs, and upgraded the tank to a UK55 gal tank  I have had a busy week as I also purchased a 6 foot long 100UK gal tank for my Malawi as well. Man that was a task filling that one up!!

Anyway, new 55 stock:
4x Firemouth (trying to get a pair!)
6x Tiger barbs
6x Black ruby barbs 
4x yoyo loach
2x blue steel
1x tiger plec
1x bristle nose


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## CjCichlid (Sep 14, 2005)

Looking good! Love the live plants..

If you ditch that background for a piece of felt cut to size it will get rid of those dark/light areas that the standard aquarium backgrounds often give you. You can use velcro to attach the felt to your tank. :thumb:


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

To be honest the background was a bit of a botch job. It doesn't fit as I took it from previous 40 gallon tank lol. It's only temporary though and I will deffo look into the felt background. Cheers for info


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## skurj (Oct 30, 2011)

better yet.. paint the background, black melamine paint and a small foam roller.


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

skurj said:


> better yet.. paint the background, black melamine paint and a small foam roller.


Dunno if I would be too happy painting the background as I may want to change the colour or type of background one day


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## skurj (Oct 30, 2011)

scrapes off with a razor blade pretty easily. To see if you like you can use black paper.


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

skurj said:


> scrapes off with a razor blade pretty easily. To see if you like you can use black paper.


I don't like using razor blades as I tend to scratch the tank lol


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## spotmonster (Nov 23, 2006)

To make that background look good and get rid of those air bubbles, spray the back of the glass with cooking spray or coat it with Vaseline. Then apply the background and squeegee the excess out of the sides. It will look great! Better yet is to paint it and get rid of the background. Both of these options are not so easy now that you have water in the tank, but both can still be done.


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

spotmonster said:


> To make that background look good and get rid of those air bubbles, spray the back of the glass with cooking spray or coat it with Vaseline. Then apply the background and squeegee the excess out of the sides. It will look great! Better yet is to paint it and get rid of the background. Both of these options are not so easy now that you have water in the tank, but both can still be done.


Don't think I will paint the background as I may want to make a change to it in the future. I will probably just stick one on the back with blu-tack as I have done with all my others, or maybe do the felt thing as said earlier 

I still have no idea if my firemouths are male or female yet. I know one is definately a male as he is starting to grow the extended fin, and is better coloured than the others (though the red under his mouth is not bright yet!) How big would they be before it becomes obviously apparent? 3inches +?


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## CjCichlid (Sep 14, 2005)

Meeki can be pretty hard to sex visually, especially when young. Both male and females can have extended dorsal and anal fins, as well as equal amounts of "red". When I had my group, the one for sure "male" I thought I initially had turned out to be female. The best way to sex them from my experience is to look at their foreheads/snout. Males will be more enlongated and steeper, while females will be shorter and more gradual.

You can also often get clues by just sitting and watching them interact with each other. Regardless.. give them some time to mature.


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## FedEXguy (Feb 24, 2005)

You can also sex them by their genitalia. Look closely at the shape of it, though it's not always protruding enough to tell, and see if it is "spiky" and angular, or rounded and bulbous. Unless they are getting frisky, it'll only be a slight difference, so you'll have to squint  Also, males will tend to have there's protruding relatively constantly without a lot of change, but females' will retract or expanding in varying degrees as they get in and out of egg-laying mode. So if you watch them for a week or two and notice one changing and one never changing, then it's a good chance of being female and male respectively.


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## chris-gashead (Dec 16, 2013)

Interactions with each other tend to be a lot of chasing. Every now and again they "shiver" and flair at each other, but mostly the better coloured (what I think is a male) firemouth will chase the rest away from his "patch". He has lovely colouration and looks like he has a steeper looking forehead. Looks likely to be a male IMO anyway. The others are harder to tell apart.

I have put a video on youtube of the fish to see if anyone can help with sexing them  (the scratches on the tank are not as bad as they appear in this video :s but it is the reason the tank was so cheap )


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