Severums

[weird]

Wow, I saw golden severums for the fish time tonight , and thought to myself how remarkedly they looked liked discus. These guys surely must be related ?

[discusdude]

Severums are amazonian, they are closely related to Uaru which like discus, feed their fry from mucus secretions. So yes they would be closely related.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Alistair22/sev.jpg

Cheers
Alistair

[Mattzilla]

a friend of mine used to have a breeding pair of goldern sevs and they where nothing short of spectacular. great looking fish and good personalities

[weird]

Do you think an 80 litres tank is too small to keep 2 ? From some reading I have had some say they have as much personality as oscars.

[jim]

They are beautiful...but I have been told by LFS that they are not good tankmate for discus...

[Trebs]

They look a lot like many of the discus I have seen around lately...

[jim]

Chinese call it pineapple fish :-)
don't they looks like pineaapple? :-)

[weird]

Yep, I don't think they are discus tank mates. Pretty kewl though, I might get one ... for my 80 litre tank. Some of the sites recommend a 200 litre tank ... if I go crazy I might add another 3 foot tank, wife will kill me ... hehehe.

[discusdude]

weird,
Hows it going? Severums are great fish. I currently have 4 green, and 7 gold. They are all in a standard 4ft tank and are doing fine. 80 litres should be enough, what are the dimensions? 200 litres sounds like a bit much. Also they can live in water anywhere between 6.4 - 7.6 no probs. Hardness anything from soft to medium. As for decor, you might want to go with river rocks and driftwood? :) Tankmates can be copora nicaraguensis, archocentrus sajica, archocentrus spilurus, geophagus brasiliensis, oscars, uaru, green horse face, red horse face and quite a few others.

Here is my male green:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Alistair22/green.jpg
And another:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Alistair22/My%20Fish/IMG_0075.jpg
and here are a bunch of sevs in my 6ft tank, they are on the left
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Alistair22/My%20Fish/fi.jpg

Also if you like sevs, look into Uaru: http://www.tangledupincichlids.com/images/uaru.jpg

Cheers
Alistair

[weird]

Great info ! I'm tossing between severums and africans at the moment. Especially thanks for the info on suitable tank mates, I love reading up on the profiles of fish.

[discusdude]

I trust you will make the right descision. That being severums. :P :P

[kevkoi]

Go the South Americans!!! Just to break convention really.... There are quite a few peaceful south Americans available.

The Severum being just one.
The earth eaters are fairly non-aggressive and make good tanks mates with the Severum.

We currently have 2 very rare and beautiful earth eaters.
Geophagus altifrons "Aripuana" (very rare variant)

Acarichthys heckelii (Threadfin acaras.... VERY rare)
http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/img/acarichthys1.jpg

[kevkoi]

Also another very under rated south american is the Parrot cichlid (no not those deformed looking things!), Herichthys (Copora) nicaraguensis. Blue in the face, orange in the body... STUNNING!

http://www.akwafoto.pl/fotoreport/krakow2/herichthyscarp_coporanic.jpg

[Mattzilla]

a friend of mine has an AWESOME eartheater video clip of a breeding pair passing hundreds of fry from one parent to the other. it's about 10 meg in size...if anyone wants to see it and can recieve such a big email let me know and i will email it to you

[Pyroman]

a friend of mine has an AWESOME eartheater video clip of a breeding pair passing hundreds of fry from one parent to the other. it's about 10 meg in size...if anyone wants to see it and can recieve such a big email let me know and i will email it to you

Matt, we'd be happy to host it if it's a good video to share.

[Mattzilla]

how do i do that?... it's definately worth seeing so tell me what i need to do and i'll find the vid on my pc at home

[RisaMoe]

Severums are very sweet fish and very similar to discus. They are cousins and have been called the "poor man's discus". They are very interactive, friendly, dance enthusiastically at meal time and get along well in a community tank.....a big community tank. They can grow to about 8-9 inches (with tail)

I have 7 (two breeding pairs) turquoise severums currently and love them all. Mine are a deep green/blueish color. I also have a discus tank....on the other side of the entertainment center.

Both fish like acidic water, but the temp is where the difference lies. Sevs really need 80-82 degrees...lower than discus are happy in. Sevs aren't really comfortable in the higher temps that discus love. Sevs are a little more aggressive than discus will want to deal with, also. Not that severums are aggressive, they're not, but they'll stand their ground without hesitation.

Right now one of them has cleared the sand from the bottom of the tank and they can see themselves in the glass......so they are all taking turns defending the floor of the tank from the "invaders".

These fish are quite smart. One of them ate an oto a couple years ago...I found him swimming around with a tail hanging out of his mouth. I waited a day to see if it was really stuck, then took everything out of the tank, caught him (that was an adventure :roll: ) and removed the oto with needle nosed plairs.

None of the severums have looked sideways at a small fish since. :wink: