breeding is more than a few months away.

more like a year or so away. these guys will take a while to reach maturity but they are great fish. I unfortunately have lost 4 males in the last 2 weeks. the last one is on it's last fin right now.

all 4 were over a year old and the largest was 4" while the smallest was around 2.5-3". I will now be left with 3 females that I acquired in Nov. but I should be able to easily get a few more.
they don't need a veggie based diet, but lots of veggies will be good for them. I've always fed them a wide variety of foods. All thorichthys are susceptible to bloat but this is usually caused from over-eating. Last year some time I got a group of 5 mixteco blues and 5 mixteco golds. I lost 1 gold and a couple blues because the dominant male in the group would eat far more than his share, and this led to bloat. the others were eating the exact same foods but in smaller amounts and these guys were fine.
I firmly believe what led to the demise of my males was too high of a temperature. there are 2 groups of Thorichthys...the meeki group and the helleri group. the only 3 species in the meeki group are T. meeki, T. pasionis and T. affinis. All other Thorichthys including the 3 mixtecos are in the helleri group. The reason I brought all this up is because the helleri group do not do well in high temps. The water for these fish should never go above 76F. I didnt' read about this until just a few months ago, which is when I moved the golds out of my 150 which for a while had maintained a temp of around 84 despite attempts to bring it down. I now have the 150 down to about 76-78 but the golds have been in a different tank. I moved the golds around twice and the last move was to a tank with a temp of 80. this can only be attributed to a lack of attention to detail. I didn't notice that a long time ago I'd set the temp of my 75 gallon up to 80 and this was the tank I moved the golds into. I don't think it mattered much though because they'd already lived almost a year in the 150 which was always around 84 and I think this led to their demise. the high temp will very gradually cause a decline in their health unlike bloat which will only take around 2-3 days to go from first symptoms to death.
incidentally, should you happen to notice the warning signs of bloat I've read that metronidazole is about the only way to attempt a cure. Aquaruim Pharmaceuticals makes a "General Cure" tablet whose #1 ingredient is metro so should you ever notice your golds to stop eating or start pooping white, stringy poo you ougt to consider buying the General Cure.
