What do you think about Flowerhorns?

[kevkoi]

Dear fellow friends of this forum,
There has recently been a hot discussion about the issue on Flowerhorns and hybrid fish on the Sydney Cichlid Forum. I was the one who kicked up the mess.... but it's got lots of coverage now. If you would like to hear why you SHOULD or SHOULD NOT keep these Hybrid fish, have a read thru this discussion. Essentially, there are some people out there who have adamantly classified 'Flowerhorns' as "Non-Fish" and thus should not be cichlids. (If that argument goes thru, u should not be posting Flowerhorn postings in this section of the forum, because it is only for cichlids! ha ha ha...)

Anyway, it's a good and educational read. U will learn something and something is being said about the conservation movement of fish there too. Some of you might like to put in your 2 cents worth. It's a public forum... make youself heard.


http://pub80.ezboard.com/fthesydneyc... D=4309.topic

kevkoi[/url]

[hualuohandotcom]

Up 2 ppl, diff ppl diff mind/view.

[dttk]

From my 2-3 months of keeping the LH(Luo Han), I find that it is an intelligent fish and a very playful one too. It looks at you as if checking to see your response with it's sparkling red eyes rolling to your direction . It learns quickly and each LH has it's own distinct character! Some are easily frightened but some are not. A shy LH can be trained to become bold and friendly. It is amazing to see how they interact with their keeper! They come in a wide array of colours and the colours changes with their moods... . The pearl variety of the LH is truly beautiful. The nuchal prominence makes the LH a unique and exciting fish to keep. A small bulge on the head makes it cute to look at and a large one makes it look grand.

[newgern]

Totally agree with Uncle Tan!

Before i know about What Is LUO HAN, i was not interested with it, and i didn't think about what is the beuty of it...Until my uncle gave me 1, and then i bought 1 too. found out they are very interesting as they do have different characters, 1 of them don't like pallets, 1 of them love it! LOL~ and now i ended keeping 5 of them! now hoping that they can get more colorful!

Regards,
John

[eugene]

I hope what i had mentioned underneath here doesn't hurt any of those flower horn lover. Anyway, I can simply said they are only fishes that looks like the common tilapia except with a bump and some patterns on thier bodies. Besides that they are hybrid and there's no scientific name for it. I don't call it is cichlid, they are aliens to me and i hate them because all the aquarium shops are selling them. There are getting less and less choices for me to look for other varieties of fishes..

[dttk]

Eugene , don't worry about offending anyone over here with your remarks. I don't find them offensive . I sent a pic of my LH to my brother in the US and he said they looked like aliens and deformed! . It is normal to get different reactions from different people. To some, maybe it takes time to appreciate the uniqueness and beauty of the LH. To some it is love at first sight. In this fast paced world of constant stress and tension from work, a nice little interactive friendly water pet to play with is therapeutic to the mind and body! :P Cheers!

[kevkoi]

I have to agree with Eugene... if you're not into Flowerhorns, there really isn't much of a choice for you at the local fish shops anymore! Worse if I was a discus fan.... u hardly find any good quality discus anymore in FS these days. Guess it's too hard for them to keep alive...

The trouble with flowerhorns is that they are easy to keep..... so FS stock PLENTY of them. It's sort of a mixed blessing... Novice fish keepers can keep Flowerhorns (because they are hardy cichlids), and learn about fish keeping without have to lose the fish (will take quite a bashing to kill the fish really as compared to the Discus or even fancy goldfish!). On the other hand, this flowerhorn craze has limited the offering of other fish species (which are as interesting or even more interesting).

That said, someone once said that the flowerhorn was the closest thing he had to a dog in an aquarium with so much personality. U could play with it like a doggie (it even eats almost as much as one!) and the only thing you couldn't do was take it around the park for a walk (which might be a good thing!).

Oh well...... it's a funny thing this flowerhorn craze...

[Khoobg]

During the previous Discus Boom about 6 ~ 7 years ago, you will possibly find 20 ~ 30 FS in KL offering High Quality Discus. Flower Hon is totally on a different scale. Within 2KM radious from my home, there used to be only three FS, today it has more than 20. The worst thing is even mobile phone shop, cafe, video shop now sell Flower Hon.

Flower Hon is so easy to breed and I wonder how long can the price hold

[kevkoi]

I have to agree there.... IMO, it's going to crash if this unsustainable trend keeps going. I can already see the desperation with farms churning out 'new species' of flowerhorn..... without tails! Resorting to snipping tail off fry to market a freak.... now that's pretty low.

(PS: dttk, dun get offended yah... wasn't making a stab at you. I'm sure you were duped and honestly didn't know your 'one and only' is currently mass produced. )

[dttk]

Hey Kev, don't feel sorry for me for making those comments. Duped or not, this One-And-Only is truly a wonderful fish. It's getting prettier by the day as far as colour and body shape goes. My uncle bought it for RM200 just 3 months ago. A friend saw the pic and offered RM3000. He declined. I guess money isn't everything Whether the tail was snipped and mass produced or not, we've not seen another similar one anywhere. So it remains as our One-And-Only :P Have you found the website yet? If so, pls let me know. Rgds.