Cichlid Venustus | Haplocchromis venustus

Venentus or venustus belongs to the cichlid group, to be precise, the Haplochromine Ciclhlid. Venustus fish are known to come from Africa, precisely in Lake Malawi. In the original habitat of this Venentus fish, it likes to be at the bottom in the middle of the water, especially when it is targeting prey as food. The venentus fish can camouflage together with the sand at the bottom of the lake.

Venustus fish in the wild can reach a size of 10 inches or about 25 cm and can reach a life of 10 years. In the original habitat of the Venustus fish it is usually at a depth of 15-20 meters above the water surface. Even though they are in deep waters, these fish are also able to survive well in ponds or aquariums with a water depth of only 40 cm.

The pH of the water at 7.6 – 8.8 and a temperature in the range of 24-28°C are the right water conditions for keeping Venustus fish. Fish that have a brownish yellow base color with black spots that are connected to each other, including predatory fish that are quite aggressive. Like most cichlids fish characters.

Difficulty Caring for Fish

For those who want to keep Venustus fish, it is expected that they are familiar or proficient in keeping fish, because these fish are very aggressive and do not match certain fish. Fellow cichlids such as lemon fish, juwani, blue peacok, niasa, snow white, demasoni, nintynine and several other cichlid fish can still be combined with this fish.

The intensity of periodic water changes must also be carried out so that cichlids can grow and develop optimally and of course they are not susceptible to flatulence or other diseases that commonly infect Venusus fish.

Food

Venustus fish are omnivores, but in the wild Venustus fish usually eat smaller fish, so they can be considered piscivores. When caring for venustus fish in an aquarium they can do best on a high protein diet. They can be fed live or frozen or dried food, pellets and other high quality food for piscivores. If you want to increase your hunting instincts, you can feed smaller live fish every now and then. But keep in mind that if the instinct to hunt fish has begun to look this fish is very unfriendly to other residents, especially the smaller ones.

Venustus fish need a herbivorous diet as well to balance their diet. Children up to 7 to 10cm in size can be fed pelleted flakes of shrimp or worms that have been dried or in the oven, but once the flakes are not eaten they will easily contaminate the water. For adult Venentus it is best to be fed frozen food twice a week. They will eat until their stomachs are distended, so care must be taken not to overfeed.

Ideally feed fish, all types of fish including Venus in a day as much as 2-3 times of feeding, in addition to the right combination of feed, fasting once a week is also good for their diet.

Aquarium Care

The condition of Venentus fish will easily deteriorate in poor water conditions. Always maintain the quality of the water pH at 7.6 – 8.8 and the temperature in the range of 24-28°C. Replacement of water is nested once a week with water discharge replaced with new water of about 10-20% of the tank capacity. The filter media should also be cleaned periodically.

As explained earlier, if the disease that attacks Venentus fish is generally flatulence due to eating too much, so in addition to maintaining water quality, always cleaning up leftover food that has not been eaten in 5 minutes must also pay attention to the amount of food given.

Social behavior

Venustus fish are not tame fish so only certain fish can be mixed with this fish. In addition to the cichlid fish mentioned above, several other fish of the same size can also be mixed. Rainbow fish that is native to Papua can also be combined with Venus. Synodontic algae-eating fish can also be made friends in an aquarium.

The aggressive level of fish will increase during spawning, even in groups of adult fish if there are other males they can kill each other if the aquarium is small and make them easy to meet. So during the spawning period, it is necessary to pay attention to the behavior of the fish in the aquarium, if you think there are other fish that are threatened, you can immediately move them to another tank.

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