if you've ordered from LiveFishDirect ...

[davidhusker]

I am just curious. I ordered from them a while ago back in march or so and got some pretty nice fish. I had a DOA which was replaced and all is well. The fish looked really good, but maybe a bit too good?

I got in a 3" Cop. Borleyi male, FULL blazing color. Im not talking "coloring up" but full red body, blue head, the works. Last week, i stripped 30 fry from this FEMALE (it now is female coloration...I assumed it was due to a tank move with multiple males he lost some dominance) I think i have a blurry picture of the first week i got it that i can upload.

I also got in a 3" bright yellow benga sunshine male, it was a very sweet looking male. Now he barely has any color, but i still believe it to be a male. It could be from the move to a male tank, but i think there are other factors in play here...

Finally another piece of evidence. Pretty similar to the above i order a Protomelas spilonotus who had really good color, and has since lost it all and has almost doubled in size (little yellow still showing on the belly).

So I'm trying to tell myself that they arent feeding their fish hormones, but i clearly have a big case for that (Borleyi).

Has anyone else experienced this with their fish?

 

[iamzrad]

There was a group order last December with me and a few others on here, and I never recall getting a fish that was "too good" as its size.

But these days, you find bright *** blue Ahli's at 2". It's sad to hear and see it, but I would assume these fish are getting some 'juice'.

What you are saying is almost backwards. Fish are losing color with age when they should be gaining it. I don't like using this saying but, something is 'fishy' here...
Another thing could be line-breeding.

 

[Tony]

I have a bunch of fish that I got when they were very little.... 1" or less, no color.

Keeping them in a species tank will make them pop *very* early. Like full color on a 2.5"-3" hap that gets 8" full grown.

Not saying that is the case with the mail order fish, but it does happen if conditions are right. (After having seen the top-notch conditions in which LFD keeps their fish, I believe that is the case).


Conversely, sticking the early bloomer in with a bunch of larger males will make him chill very quickly.

 

[DiscusnAfricans]

Yeah, the borleyi case sounds strange. But most fish I order that come showing good color lose most of it for a short period of time unless they're singly housed. I had a 3" benga male in a 30 gallon with a few females and juvies, showing great color. Moved him to a 90 with some medium sized peacocks and haps, he lost some color but held his own. After a while I moved him to my 120 with much larger fully colored fish and he dropped all of his color. He shows a little once in a while, but very muted. Eventually he'll color back up.

I ordered fish from LFD before and didn't have any similar problems. Hopefully its not a hormone issue, but can't really help much other than offering my experience.

 

[Cartel]

I have seen people knock LFD before but I still defend them. I have 6 or 7 fish from them and they look great. None came in too good to be true and all have grown nicely into thier colors. I don't take pictures of my fish so no luck in me showing you what they look like sorry. Only problem I had with them was getting a female black fin lethrinops (which you now have) instead of a male but they have sexed all my other fish great. In fact my favorite fish at the moment came from them a male Champsochromis.

 

[cmcpart0422]

I dont think a facility that LFD would ever use hormones. They have to much to lose if they get found out. I have to side with Tony on this one. If I grow out 30 peacock fry in a 29 gallon I will have 3 or 4 fully colored males at 2-2.5 inches in size. They have a very large facility and probably grow out fry by the hundreds or even thousands at a time for a single species which can give them tons of "early bloomers". Now I have had my problems with LFD but I do believe they run a legit business that is hormone free over there. And with the amount of fish they sell I'm sure the issue would have been addressed by now.

But then again you never know what someone will do for a few extra bucks.

 

[fischfan13]

We had a post about them on ECC a while back...most bashed them.
Check out their reviews on CF...doesn't look too good there either.

BBB has had a lot of complaints about them.

 

[hollyfish2000]

I placed an order once with them. I didn't have a colored up issue. I had a deadness issue -- a 75 percent mortality rate within two or so weeks in QT. Since that time, I've ordered a total of 25 fish from four different (other) venders and have had 0 percent mortality. Make of that what you will . . .

 

[Charlutz]

I agree with Tony that colored up fish at a small size is not necessarily an indicator of a juiced fish. I visited the Old Fish New Fish warehouse when Bob Pilato and Mike Hill owned it. They had tanks and tanks of young peacocks where there were maybe 50-75 fish in a tank. In every tank, there was one fully colored male and possibly a second partially colored male at amazingly small sizes. Fully colored peacocks under 2". Fully colored red empress under 3". The fish were not juiced because only one or two fish out of 75 in the tank was colored up.

I peppered Bob with questions and found that everything they did was similar to what you could do at home. Lots of water changes. Good food. The only difference I could see was that the fish were in the dark most of the time. Very little light was in the warehouse. I theorized that the dominant males were coloring up to breed and needed the bright colors to be seen in the dark. Probably not unlike in the wild where the fish live at depth.

I have no way of knowing if I was right about the darkness being the cause, but I can confirm that you can have legit fish colored very small.

The facts surrounding the borleyi are suspicious however. It would be odd for a place like LFD to juice though. What's the point? You buy the fish sight unseen anyway. It's not like they sell more fish because the fish look good in the tanks since you can't see them anyway.

 

[Andrewtfw]

If their fish are being supplied with hormones, I would venture to say it is ot at their facility, but rather the suppliers they are getting fish from. These days just about anything coming out of asia is being altered be it in the form of juicing or hybridizing. Most lfs (even the big ones) are getting much of their africans from Asia. This is not only because lfs can bring in larger fish for less money, but also because the economy has impacted many smaller-scale wholesalers to the point where they are either out of business, or have decreased the variety of less common fish.

 

[davidhusker]

Yeah well It's not so much the issue of the benga or the spilo, I figured they would drown out a little bit in the color department, i just posted them on there to add a little fuel to the fire. Now if one of the two start holding eggs, then we have an issue haha.

I also had 2 fish die, and actually I think those 2 fish are the cause of a parasite that went through a few others in my tank. Anyhow, it's good to see what others have. I like LFD but in all the years i've been raising haps, I think it is clear to me that at some point in that borleyi's life it was given hormones.

I do agree with andrew, probably a supplier, not LFD's facility.

 

[Pat Kelly]

I think color depends on the fish too.

I have had some peacocks that had no color until 3 inches while
I have had others that developed early.
The Ruby Red male that I showed last year had tons of color at 1 inch.
I also have an Albino Eureka that did the same thing. He had better color at 1 inch than he has at 4 inches.
Some children are cute and grow up ugly. LOL did i say that out loud.?

 

[Tony]

I saw this video a few months back and was very impressed.

[YT]<object width="960" height="745"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NgxH6AGvlcs&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NgxH6AGvlcs&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="960" height="745"></embed></object>[/YT]

I've only ordered from them once and may not again for a while (since I met Dave and Erik) but I have to say, the LFD guys are doing things right.

Remember, shipping from out west is going to be a lot harder on your fish than east coast/mid Atlantic shipped fish.

 

[DiscusnAfricans]

Yeah well It's not so much the issue of the benga or the spilo, I figured they would drown out a little bit in the color department, i just posted them on there to add a little fuel to the fire. Now if one of the two start holding eggs, then we have an issue haha.

I also had 2 fish die, and actually I think those 2 fish are the cause of a parasite that went through a few others in my tank. Anyhow, it's good to see what others have. I like LFD but in all the years i've been raising haps, I think it is clear to me that at some point in that borleyi's life it was given hormones.

I do agree with andrew, probably a supplier, not LFD's facility.

Yeah, hopefully the benga and spilo don't go tranny on you.

Hopefully the parasite didn't cause too much havoc, but good example for need for quarantine, even from trusted suppliers.

Andrew brought up an interesting point about other vendors fish. I think most of us assumed the borleyi was home grown, but if LFD buys from other wholesalers, then you have to assume anything is possible.

 

[Andrewtfw]

It is my understanding that live fish direct contacts out for their fish. They may have private suppliers, but that does not mean that their suppliers are not being supplied with juiced fish. If LFD has good customer service, I would think they could inform you of how they come by the fish they sell. They will likely not divulge the name of the suppliers though.

 

[Charlutz]

Good point Andrew. Has the original poster reached out to LFD to see what they say? Good chance that if it happened to one fish, it happened to others.

 

[cmcpart0422]

LFD do get some of their fish from Taiwan so im sure their is a chance that they can get some juiced fish. Now im not saying that they use hormones im just saying they import from asia and there is a chance that some of the fish they get can have some hormone influence. Just click on this link and read the description of the fish.

http://www.livefishdirect.com/store.php?fid=603

 

[davidhusker]

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

From original post

I also got in a 3" bright yellow benga sunshine male, it was a very sweet looking male. Now he barely has any color, but i still believe it to be a male. It could be from the move to a male tank, but i think there are other factors in play here...

So I went to feed my fish today, and saw that my Benga "MALE" was a FEMALE! It has a huge mouthful of eggs. This is now a little ridiculous.

Not only the Borleyi, which was a full blown red/blue MALE turned into 100% female, spawned and lost color, but now the Benga Peacock.

This fish for the first month or two was show quality male. Im talking nice solid yellow, fully colored, nice shimmery blue on the face, and only about 2.5 to 3"

I had mentioned it started losing some color, but even to this day, its got a lot of yellow (dull).

Here is a pic the week I got it in. Granted its a terrible shot and no lighting, you can see full yellow throughout.

Just everyone be on your toes when ordering from LFD. I ordered 5 males. 1 was DOA and refunded, 1 died of parasites (was not refunded), 2 turned out to be females, and 1 is a great looking male fish (this ones male for sure i hope).

Great Price, Great Selection, Great Shipping, Use Hormones (IMO).

:wacko:

 

[todda]

I had a bad experience with LFD. I ordered 12 featherfins, they sent me 6 featherfins and 6 Lethrinops Red Cap in the same bag? Then when I called josh - he said they will not be caring featherfins anymore. Now that they have grown for a year, I find out that I have 6 males. Also, I ordered 6 female kyoga flamebacks, when i got them there were 4f 2m? I would stick with daves rare fish, or reserve stock cichlids. I will not order from them again. My 2 cents