You know what angers me?

[anewbie]

So six days after my email to Aqua Huna requesting two female orange flash a. cacatuoides, I received an ambiguous reply. The message said it was their policy not to ship two females but I could request it anyway. So that is exactly what I did. Two a. cacatuoides will arrive at my door step before noon tomorrow. I’ll let you know if I receive two females. BTW Jeff who runs Aquaticclarity never answered my query. So I took that as a resounding No! But all is well that ends well so if two females arrive tomorrow I will give up my anger. Namaste

The trick with Jeff is to mail him again and/or call him though that does not always work.

As for aquahuna they generally will not select fish sex but it is a crap shoot and a bit depends on who is doing the catching/bagging. The thing is that i've gotten enough 'defective' dwarf cichild (won't go into detail here) as well as dithers that i almost never use them these days and in general i prefer wc stock (which of course is not relevant to your colour morph). Btw there is no reason you have to get the same colour morph female as your male as the colour matters not and you could create your own line with a female from another colour

[btw even worse is that not all sellers agree on the same details when it comes to colour morph - i.e, there is no 'standardization' that associate the seller assigned name to a specie's colour; though there are general expectations by some buyers which are sometime met and sometime not.

 

[GaryE]

A lot will depend on the size of the fish. With the various things sold as orange flash, double, single, triple red, super yellow etc, you are dealing with modified fish. They're breeder selected varieties with no show standards. I've seen 'triple red' cacatuoides that had sulphur yellow fins.
I've been in a few wholesalers and mail order places - often with bare tanks, and bad lighting. In the last one I saw, the fish catchers were Ukrainian refugees - hard working women who had never paid any attention to fish before the wrong kind of tanks rolled in. Fancy form Apistos can be hard to sex when small, and the bags bought by the company aren't always 50/50 ratios. I would consider myself very lucky to get 2 females if I ordered them, so I hope your luck is good. Even a sincere and experienced seller is working fast and mistakes are so easy to make with 2cm fancy cacatuoides.

The expensive and inconvenient (very) hack is to order six to get two. The ability to inform ourselves and buy fish we see and choose is a huge loss with the withering away of quality local stores.

But it is a treat to see someone angered by something other than propaganda channels on TV and online!

 

[connorlindeman]

I get around 50 messages a day. 95% of messages sent to my business receive a reply within 24 hours. The other 5 percent are within 48. All messages get a reply. That's the proper way to do business. I run this business on my own.
Maybe 15 years ago it was normal for replies to take a few days, but in today age of instant gratification, people have come to expect replies within a day if not within hours. I have had customers follow up on an email sent 3 hours before. Amazon has made it so people can get their order within 2 days and offer live chat so people can get their questions answered instantly. That's what people are used to now.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

So.....two females or a pair?
Don't leave us in suspense.

 

[anewbie]

So.....two females or a pair?
Don't leave us in suspense.

I think he is in mountain time so they probably just arrived a few minutes ago.

 

[gwand]

So.....two females or a pair?
Don't leave us in suspense.

LOL. Well they are young so I’m not certain. But one fish is bigger than the other. This may indicate a pair. Once they settle in I will post some pictures and see what you think. Most importantly, the two fish look healthy after their journey.

 

[anewbie]

LOL. Well they are young so I’m not certain. But one fish is bigger than the other. This may indicate a pair. Once they settle in I will post some pictures and see what you think. Most importantly, the two fish look healthy after their journey.

You know i was thinking about this - and wanted to check if you took their pulse, checked oxygen level in the blood stream and checked if they had any hidden virus in their tails ?

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

You know i was thinking about this - and wanted to check if you took their pulse, checked oxygen level in the blood stream and checked if they had any hidden virus in their tails ?

High cholesterol, the silent killer.

 

[gwand]

You know i was thinking about this - and wanted to check if you took their pulse, checked oxygen level in the blood stream and checked if they had any hidden virus in their tails ?

LOL. Before I closed my lab and retired I could get those metrics and more on lab mice. But I never did research on fish.

 

[gwand]

Here are some pics of my new a. cacatuoides orange flash. They arrived yesterday and are in my quarantine tank. I requested two females but received an ambiguous maybe. One fish is definitely a female. She is about 25% smaller than the other fish. The larger fish has more orange and could be a young male or a female.

Young male or female?

Female

 

[anewbie]

I'm lousy at sexing but i lean towards male due to how the dorsal fin pops up. A better picture of the extended petral fins would help.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

You'll know when they spawn during QT