How to Care for Red Dragon Flowerhorns

Simple Tips for Enhancing Red Dragon Flowerhorns

The red dragon flowerhorn is one of the very first Lou Hans I kept. As with other flowerhorns belonging to the Zen Zhou category, the red dragon is unbelievably very easy to enhance and care for. If you are a newbie to this hobby, I suggest keeping this strain or any strain belonging to the Zen Zhou category.

In this post, I will discuss with you everything you need to know on how to care for red dragon flowerhorns. Even if you have very limited experience keeping fishes, I guarantee that by following the tips below, you will do just fine in keeping these hardy cichlids.

How to Enhance Flowerhorn Color

A Guide on How to Improve Flowerhorn Color

Enhancing the beauty of flowerhorn fishes is not confined with improving the size of their nuchal humps alone. Equally important is increasing flowerhorn color intensity.

Natural Colors

The most popular color for flowerhorn fishes is red. It is extremely popular among people who practice feng shui. Other popular colors include yellow, orange, blue, and silver, as in the case of Thai Silks.  

Which Color Should I Enhance?

Your goal as owner should enhance the natural colors of your fish. A common mistake that beginners do is forcing the fish to develop red colorations even though is natural base is blue. Never do this as this could make your fish sick or develop some form of allergic reaction, especially if too much enhancer is used.

How to Make Flowerhorn Fry Grow Fast

A Guide on Improving the Growth Rate of Flowerhorn Fry

A big challenge that comes with breeding flowerhorns is making the fry grow as fast as possible. While it is more important to focus more on producing high quality fishes, this aspect of the breeding process is equally important.

Scope

This guide deals with fishes from their wriggler stage (when the eggs are hatched) until they are 2 months old. These fishes are still kept in community tanks.

Juveniles that are “groomed” in individual tanks are not included in this guide. My next article will deal with those juveniles.

Types of Flowerhorn Food for Fry Care

Choosing the right type of flowerhorn food for fry can significantly improve their survival rate.In this article, we shall be dealing with the different types of flowerhorn fry food and the conditions upon which they should be used.

When to Start Feeding Flowerhorn Food to Fry

Never feed the fry when their food sacs are still full. After hatching, it usually takes three to five days before these sacs are fully consumed. After that, the fry will start feeding. If their population is quite large, more than a thousand, make sure that you feed them as soon as they start looking around. The tank naturally holds living organisms for feeding, but if the population is too large it can be fully consumed instantly. If you chose to let the female flowerhorn care for the fry, introduce food before her skin runs out of slime.

Flowerhorn Breeding Tips for Aggressive Fish

How to Breed Over Aggressive Flowerhorn Fish

In this article, you will find proven breeding tips for an overaggressive flowerhorn fish.

Flowerhorn cichlids are especially aggressive when they breed. However, there are steps you can do to reduce or manage that aggression.

1. Properly prepare your flowerhorn breeding couple.

2. Let the breeders live together in a single tank divided by a clear glass or acrylic for a long time; up to 2 month or more if needed. This allows both to become familiar with each other.

5 Best Flowerhorn Breeding Tips You Should Know

Flowerhorn Breeding Tips to Improve Performance

There are countless flowerhorn breeding tips and techniques, but only a few of them really matters. In this article, let us limit our discussion to the top five flowerhorn breeding tips. They are the following:

1. Use High Quality Parent Flowerhorns

If you want high quality results, it is logical that you should use the best materials you can find. Do not fall into the trap of breeding low quality flowerhorns expecting that high quality fry will come out of it. 

If you want to breed for fun, you may use average quality breeders. However, if you are really serious in producing high quality flowerhorns, invest in high quality breeders.

How to Artificially Incubate Flowerhorn Eggs with High Hatching Rate

There are instances when you would need to facilitate the hatching of the fertilized flowerhorn eggs yourself.

• When the female has developed the habit of devouring her own eggs and fry
• When the female has been heavily injured while mating
• When you want to hasten the recovery period of the female flowerhorn as preparation for another breeding program

Preparing the Hatching Tank

You should prepare a tank with clean aged water, 8-12 inches deep. Use methylene blue to slow down fungi and other microorganism growth.