Porkchop the pearsei - finally an update - lol

So Ive had  Porkchop now since October 2012 when I got it from madness and it was about 5". Ive been bad and have not had any pics up.... so better late than never. Here are shots from tonight.
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Have not measured but I think Porckchop is a little over 12" more like 13". Very nice peaceful cichlid, that gets along great in a community environment. I have not sexed it but am leaning toward female but when I had introduced a confirmed male with 'her' a while back, he got beat down. So might be a really tough girl or a male.

Porkchop was named for her enormous appetite for food, she is a huge piggy!   

Not many raise these fish, I think I know of only one other fishbox member who has one. Great fish if you have the space.

Beautiful fish you have there D, very beautiful.

Thanks for getting her to me. I am very happy with the eating machine.

Porkchop is so beautiful!!

Thank you, I wish I could capture her iridescent green better. I just need to take more pictures.

Great update! Her face just screams pork chop!!!!

That's a good loOkn' fish DMD123. 1 + for Porkchop & care giver!

My wife and I were watching "Too cute" on animal planet and they showed a kitten named Porkchop and I just couldnt see it. Porkchop is a fish name for sure, or at least a pot belly pig name.

fishNAbowl wrote:That's a good loOkn' fish DMD123. 1 + for Porkchop & care giver!

Thank you   

It was actually playing around with my old DSLR trying to better pics than I usually do with the old point and shoot.

Porkchop is a cutie and her tank looks so nice and clean! Love those "plants".

Great shots...love the name. Thanks for sharing.

Betty wrote:Porkchop is a cutie and her tank looks so nice and clean! Love those "plants".

With all the 'vegetarians' in the tank its funny that even the plastic plants all have nibble marks on them.

cichlid-gal wrote:Great shots...love the name.  Thanks for sharing.

After your new camera shots, I broke out my fancy camera and had to get some shots. Thanks again for the inspiration.

DMD123 wrote:So Ive had  Porkchop now since October 2012 when I got it from madness and it was about 5". Ive been bad and have not had any pics up.... so better late than never. Here are shots from tonight.
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Have not measured but I think Porckchop is a little over 12" more like 13". Very nice peaceful cichlid, that gets along great in a community environment. I have not sexed it but am leaning toward female but when I had introduced a confirmed male with 'her' a while back, he got beat down. So might be a really tough girl or a male.

Porkchop was named for her enormous appetite for food, she is a huge piggy!   

Not many raise these fish, I think I know of only one other fishbox member who has one. Great fish if you have the space.

Great looking Pearsi you have D... . Mine is the same way except he is not as docile, Lol.. I'll have to get a couple pics of mine up here soon.

Drd62 wrote:Great looking Pearsi you have D... . Mine is the same way except he is not as docile, Lol.. I'll have to get a couple pics of mine up here soon.

Thanks, I think you and I are the only ones on here with pearsei at the moment. Im pretty sure Porkchop is female by her demeanor, much more gentle that the confirmed males I had in the past. Its been a long road to finally get a big pearsei and I have a gentle giant.

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.
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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'.
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She was the perfect fit, exactly what I was looking for. A good community fish, friendly and social. Here she is a few moths after I got her:
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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):
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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.  

PorkCHOP is looking smashing.

Madness wrote:PorkCHOP is looking smashing.

Thanks, after all she was once your fish!   

I just got her started, you completed her.

Madness wrote:I just got her started, you completed her.

That was a 'Jerry Maguire' moment...   

DMD123 wrote:

Drd62 wrote:Great looking Pearsi you have D... . Mine is the same way except he is not as docile, Lol.. I'll have to get a couple pics of mine up here soon.

Thanks, I think you and I are the only ones on here with pearsei at the moment. Im pretty sure Porkchop is female by her demeanor, much more gentle that the confirmed males I had in the past. Its been a long road to finally get a big pearsei and I have a gentle giant.

I think you are right. mine is a confirmed male with a little bit of an attitude but for the most part is pretty docile as far as larger fish go.

The large male I had for a while was pretty mean as far as pearsei go. But at times I wonder if Porkchop is a boy because 'she' gave that confirmed male a beatdown and had him hiding in the corner. The only real 'aggression' issue would be at feeding, she will chase off the other fish sometimes.