Wolf Cichlid; size XXL

[littlen]

Just a random, visual, post to fulfill your large cichlid needs on a Monday morning. This fellow, along with several other males were easily 18"+ inches. They were all removed from the Giant River Fish exhibit (pool) at Amazonia back in 2014. The original descendants of these guys were were tossed in 10 or so years before and were only a couple inches. Despite having large predators in the exhibit, Arapaima, Red Tail Cats, the Wolfs survived and bred like crazy. There are still several in the exhibit today (and breed), but the largest may only be 6" or so.

 

[paul]

I LOVE the Amazonia exhibit! Been too long since I've visited. So they actually retire their fish to home aquariums??

 

[abcdefghi]

Same here, love the Amazonia exhibit. Was just there about a month ago, wish I lived a little closer to the zoo as I always enjoy visiting. First time I saw Discus was in the large pool to the right when you first walk in, no idea what happened to them but there was a good size group in there at one time.

 

[littlen]

Paul, the wolf cichlids were donated to a local business.

Alphabet, the discus have been gone for a handful of years. The last few were retired to a 75g where all of the small tanks are around the corner. They community changed in that first pool with the rays. It became overrun with guppies. After doing a very large scale, manual removal of most of them, medium-sized predators were added to clean up the rest. There are now several Lima shovelnose cats, a couple Soldier cats, a Azul peacock bass, 4 silver arowana, a handful of pike cichlids, 2 zebra shovelnose cats, and several oscars. The best guppy hunters that are now all gone were the Vampire characins.

 

[abcdefghi]

I bet that looked pretty crazy being overrun with guppies!! The little tanks are also usually full of interesting fish as well.

Do you work at the zoo? Or just have a lot of knowledge of the exhibit?

 

[littlen]

An underestimate would easily be 10K. Safe to bet on 10’s of thousands. There was one predator in there at the time I started—a Pike characin that could basically filter feed. This was likely the fattest fish for its size I’ve ever seen. As the fish (and turtles) swam through the guppies, it looked like the scenes in the ocean documentaries where a shark swims through a massive school of sardines. It was really sad. Lots of guests thought they were baby fish.

They are slowly making a comeback.

I do indeed work there.

 

[domdes]

Lets educate all of you a little from someone who has ben in the hobby for over forty years in these parts, everybody was asking where did the huge wolf fish go to? Well they went to Richard(Beltway Aquarium) if you want the truth, for those of you that go to his store on the regular, if you remember a few years back when they were gone from the exhibit tank, wasn't it strange that Richard all of a sudden he had about 6/8 of these monster sized fish at his store, selling for crazy money(starting $800 then as the heard lowered down in size, price went down to $500 each until gone) and ALL of you believed him when he said that they were WILD caught. And something else that you probably don't know is who do you think they get all those arapaima's from & odd fish of that nature, duh Richard. Those folk there are good friends of Richard's so it only makes sense that their fish, especially hard to find species comes from some one that gets in the odd ball fish.

 

[littlen]

Without getting into the weeds too much, I will say that no business is conducted with Beltway and all new, aquatic, and oddball (South American) fish come from reputable, fish wholesalers. Some of which are imported from Peru.

Surprising and disappointed to find out “Wild” was used when the truth is “extremely inbred”.

 

[Freakgecko]

An underestimate would easily be 10K. Safe to bet on 10’s of thousands. There was one predator in there at the time I started—a Pike characin that could basically filter feed. This was likely the fattest fish for its size I’ve ever seen. As the fish (and turtles) swam through the guppies, it looked like the scenes in the ocean documentaries where a shark swims through a massive school of sardines. It was really sad. Lots of guests thought they were baby fish.

They are slowly making a comeback.

I do indeed work there.

Not to derail at all, but does that area of the zoo do volunteer work? Currently not working and wouldn’t mind something to occupy a bit of my time. PM me if you get a chance. Thanks!

 

[littlen]

Sorry for the lake response, Kyle. Here is a link to get you started: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/support/volunteer/washington-dc
Essentially, you volunteer for FONZ, which supports the zoo. They hire new volunteers--for each unit as needed. I don't think Amazonia is currently hiring any new volunteers. But once you get in, you can move around to different units. PM me if you have more questions.