# uaru tips wanted



## aspen (Jun 15, 2004)

hey, i just got 10 1" - 1 1/2" orange form uaru babies. anybody got any tips on how to raise them up? they are in a 10 gal with a sponge filter atm, soon to be transferred to a 20 tall. temp is 80- deg, water is toronto tapwater (ph- 7.6, 160 ppm). what i'm feeding them so far is, tetra bits, and lettuce and will try some fbs and bw's. any help would be greatly apprecieated.

rick


----------



## dwarfpike (Jan 22, 2008)

If it were me, I'd raise the temp to 82-84 or so and cut out the frozen brineshrimp, or at the very least get the spurilina brine shrimp instead ...


----------



## Joels fish (Nov 17, 2007)

What *dwarfpike* said, up the temp and lose the brine shrimp. The spirulina brine shrimp is ok but these guys do better with a lot of veggies in their diet . Spinach , leaf lettuce , and any other leafy veggie is good. No herbs . The frozen veggie cubes are good too but expensive. A high quality pellet that leans to the vegitarian side of the spectrum is a must as well , but a good pellet food supplemented by fresh veggies is just as good. Treats of mysis , blood worms , and market shrimp are good for a little extra protien.

Be prepaired to move these little fellas soon. They grow fast , I mean crazy fast, with proper diet and good water quality . My last pair grew from quarter size to palm size in no time at all. Uaru can grow to a foot long and then some so I hope you have a much larger tank for them , or are planning to get one in the near future. Considering how fast the buggers grow in won't be long till they'll need a new home.


----------



## aspen (Jun 15, 2004)

thanks guys. the next tank they're going into is a 20, then into a 30 then a 90 with 9 red humps. if i can grow them up there, then leave a pair in with them and remove the rest, and then get out another pair to hang out with 6 6" (atm) jurupari in another 90 or more, i'll be in s/a cichlid heaven around here.

>>'Spinach , leaf lettuce , and any other leafy veggie is good.'

looks like i'll be buying mixed green salad stuff for a while. they devour it like pigs.

there's not too much info out there on the orange form of uaru. it'll be fun seeing how they turn out.

rick


----------



## mambee (Apr 13, 2003)

I had a full grown pair, but one turned on the other and harassed it to the point where it had to be euthanized. My remaining Uaru is very peaceful. He is the benign ruler of a tank with various Geophagus, Severums, and a Festivum.

My Uaru loves romaine lettuce and also frozen corn kernels.

Mike


----------



## ryansmith (Apr 10, 2003)

I have some Uaru sp. 'orange' as well. Please do yourself a favor and move them to a much larger tank. Also be prepared to do water changes regularly. I have seven of them in a 55 gallon. They're about 3" in size. I do 90% water changes every day. If I slack off for a few days, I start to see signs of HITH. The same was true of my F1 Uaru fernandezyepezi. Uaru seem to be very sensitive to nitrates and dissolved organics in the water.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend keeping that many Uaru alone in a 90 gallon past 4" or 5" and with large water changes. Mixing them with nine other cichlids might be a bit much.

They are great fish, though. Mine love pretty much everything I throw at them. I treat them like discus. They get beefheart, bloodworms, the occasional mysis shrimp, some ONF2 frozen cubes (the ones with algae and spirulina in them), ONF2 flakes, Romaine lettuce, cucumber, peas, etc.

Ryan


----------



## gage (Feb 7, 2007)

HITH is caused by a parasite, same parasite that causes Hexamita or Malawi Bloat.

it is debated as to whether there are 2 types of HITH or not. My Uaru never got HITH with weekly 50% water changes.


----------



## ryansmith (Apr 10, 2003)

gage said:


> HITH is caused by a parasite, same parasite that causes Hexamita or Malawi Bloat.
> 
> it is debated as to whether there are 2 types of HITH or not. My Uaru never got HITH with weekly 50% water changes.


I've heard this a lot, too. I have treated my pandas for Hex and it didn't help. I passed them on to a friend who's a lot more experienced with fish diseases than I am, and he has also had problems. He treated them with something stronger, I think nitrofurazone (but I could be wrong), and still had issues. The pits close up and look okay, but if he doesn't do water changes for five or six days they open right back up again.

Are your Uaru wild-caught or F1? I never had a problem with my tank-raised U. amphiacanthoides but the F1 pandas and F1 orange seem to be a different story. Maybe they are more sensitive to water than fish that have been tank-bred over generations?

I've also heard the softer water helps with this. It may explain why the people breeding pandas are having better luck than I did. My water's pH is 7.6 or so with a TDS reading of 150 - 200ppm.

At any rate, just watch them. They are the only larger cichlid that I've had this issue with. My severums and discus are fine.


----------



## gage (Feb 7, 2007)

oook, mine was like a captive bred, was a 20 dollar find in petland at about 7".

my tap water is also 7.6, however, like you said, he was likely a captive bred, he was brought into petland for killing someones stingray :S lol, he was a very aggressive Uaru lol.

I guess this either proves (1) HITH can also be a bacterial type problem, or (2) there is a type of bacterial infection that shows the same signs as HITH, hmm, something for me to look into.

do you have pictures of the orange type? never seem them.


----------



## ryansmith (Apr 10, 2003)

All the F1 orange Uaru that are finding their way around the States and Canada right now came from Dale Jordan. He got a huge group of fry from his wild-caught pair and sent them to a few different sellers. I talked to him on the phone when I got the fish through one of the sellers and he told me that the adults are noticeably different compared to the regular Uaru. He said the adults have a more golden-orange color than the regular browns and are also a bit smaller. The black patch behind the eye is also different.

I don't want to post pictures without Dale's permission, but you can also see the wild ones here: http://amazon-exotic-import.de/Gallerie ... orange.htm


----------



## aspen (Jun 15, 2004)

my fish are also from dale jordan, through a fish store in toronto. i'm pretty happy to have these fish.

i'm changing 30% per day and they are very healthy so far. they have been fed green flake with met once per day, with the temp at 84 deg, standard for all my new fish. i think this should help with the hex concerns. so far their faces are all very clean. the 10 gal is a q-tank in another room from all my other fish, and they're gonna stay there for another week or so. the largest fish isn't 1 1/2" yet.

here's another pic, but i think the colours have been messed with.

http://www.american.cichlids.ru/fishdesc.php?&fid=1930

rick


----------

