Just thought I would share a little bit of my journey to getting my perfect 'porkchop'
I originally was going to pick up a pearsei from a fishbox member years ago and when I got there his fish had hole in the head. He keeps his tanks in good condition and now that Ive raised these guys I know how susceptible they are to it. So I moved on looking for a different source and I got in on a group buy and got a nice 7" WC male, whom I named Frank (after old blue eyes) because he had bluish eyes.
Sadly I made a rookie mistake and placed the new fish into my main tank along with another WC fish without quarantine and I fought a terrible battle with a disease that to this day I am not sure what it was. Lesson learned and I now have a second tank in place that acts as my quarantine tank.
After the loss of Frank and my big gentle midas from that incident I wandered around in fishkeeping trying to find a fish I liked... so I kept Oscars, a gold severum, pike cichlid, a true parrot. I needed to find that one special fish. That was when I got little Porkchop from madness in the fall of 2012. You can see her in the lower left sharing the tank with the BIG boys. This is a picture from madness that I 'borrowed'.
She was the perfect fit, exactly what I was looking for. A good community fish, friendly and social. Here she is a few months after I got her:
Yep she fill out quickly and was just an eating machine.
I got a hair-brained idea at the time that I might want to breed Porkchop so I was on the hunt for a nice male. I purchased three baby pearsei to grow out and was disappointed in what I received. These little guys showed signs of hole in the head, had torn fins that were never going to grow in right and were not specimens that would make good breeding stock. This is where I do have to give a huge thumbs up to Gage at Cichlid Connection. Since he had got these form another vendor and I had issues, he took care of me and sent me a nice male pearsei as a replacement. This one was 'different', very elongated in comparison to other pearsei. Extremely iridescent green, lots of spangling and always seemed in breeding dress. Also the meanest pearsei I had owned. Not a great community fish. I named this guy Kermit, (yes like the frog, because of the green):
Again tragedy struck and this fish ended up hurting itself on one of those glass in tank thermometers. It had shattered it and cut itself severely and soon passed away. Another lesson learned, no more glass in tank thermometers ever again.
After all this I decided to just let Porkchop be and just grow up the be the biggest, friendliest pearsei that she would be.
Sorry for all the talking just had one of those moments I wanted to share a little history on my little Porkcop.
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