Hey everyone, how are you doing? You have Mike and Sierra here and today we're going to
talk about the most commonly asked questions about blood parrots.
What we've done is went in our facebook group and asked for the commonly asked questions and we're going
to give you some answers.
Great! Alright, so question number one is what other fish
can I keep with my blood parrots Sierra?
So with blood parrots there's no exact answer with this one. There's all kinds
of different opinions.
So as far as with what we have seen with our blood parrots, ours are pretty
aggressive. With these guys some people keep them with other aggressive Central and South
Americans; something maybe like a Jack Dempsey, a Green Terror or things of that
nature. It needs to be something that's not going to be overly aggressive because they do
have a harder time defending themselves. With other parrots, you notice that
they're a little bit more docile. Some of these guys you'll actually be able to
get away with some faster-moving community fish, so sometimes angelfish
work out, sometimes danios. Things like that you want to make sure of course
that they're always bigger than the blood parrots mouths so that they are not going to
have any chances of being eaten.
Why are my blood parrots colors changing? Okay, so with this one here there's a whole
bunch of different reasons that their colors could be
changing. The first one is very straightforward; just that their babies
or they're not fully mature yet.
So when they first start out they're gonna be like a darker black or grayish
color.
This will fade over time. They'll go to their orange color. Sometimes they'll have
stripes or bars during this process and as they fade you're going to notice
that this black will slowly start to disappear and sometimes you'll see
still see spots from this, until you know, they are fully matured and that has
happened.
Other times you'll see black spots on your fully matured fish if it's
stressed, so in this case, you always want to first check your water
parameters. If everything seems fine it could be very likely be caused from being
bullied or maybe even breeding time.
There's all kinds of different reasons that these can happen, they generally do
go away though.
Another reason that you're going to see a difference in color they might go a little
pale or a little bit whiter, this is also very similar to the black spots where
it's an indication of stress.
How to tell if you have a male or female blood parrot? So to tell if your blood parrot is
a male or female
the best way to do this would actually be to vent the fish.
So this way here you actually take the fish out of the water, you would look at
it. You can look up
how to actually vent a fish. You'll see the difference between male and female.
The other way, is obviously when they do become mature sometimes if you
have a female you'll get lucky and you'll see eggs and I think that's the
only other surefire way of knowing the sex of your blood parrot.
What can I feed my blood parrot and do they have issues eating?
So blood parrots don't really have too many issues
eating, that is a common misconception. Some of them will have smaller
mouths or smaller openings.
If that's the case they will eat smaller pellets but generally they
really don't have too many issues.
Basically you want to give them a mixed diet. You want to give them a
variety of pellets, treats, all kinds of different things. You want to keep it
varied. I like to stick with a good cichlid pellet or veggie pellet as a main staple
diet.
What size of tank should I keep my blood parrots in and how many fish can
I keep in that tank? So this one you're going to get all kinds of different
opinions and different answers all across the internet. I find at least for
one you want to start out with a 40
if you want to do 2 - possibly a 55. Of course, depending...
you know as they do get larger you are going to want to upgrade them from there
because they are going to get five to six inches sometimes even a little bit
larger.
What type of tank setup will my blood parrots like? So blood parrots really enjoy
hiding so you want to make
sure they have lots of hiding spots so caves, decorations, plants, things like that.
They tend to rearrange their tanks so it's always, I found it was easier for us,
to use plastic plants. If you are going to do a planted tank you want to make sure
that the plants are going to be Hardy because they do tend to uproot them.
The other thing they really like is sand and so they're always digging, so I prefer
sand substrate. With the blood parrots, they tend to really enjoy that.
My blood parrot is very shy.
I just brought it home, what do I do? So when you first get your blood parrots,
it's actually really normal that they hide for the first few days maybe even
the first few weeks.
Like I said they can be very shy fish. They will take a little while for them to
warm up to you but they will eventually realize who feeds them and they should
warm up in no time.
Can my blood parrot produce fry? So with blood parrots, the females are fertile.
They will do produce eggs every few weeks in your tank. The males are
sterile so you aren't going to get any fry from the blood parrot pair.
I mean some people will say that 99% of males are sterile but I've never
personally come across the case where one actually has produced fry, so it's
pretty well safe to say that the chances of you actually getting fry from these
pairs
just isn't going to happen.
What can I do with the eggs in my tank?
So with the eggs, because they're not going to produce fry,
you can either leave them in the tank. After a few days nature will take its
course and the female or the male will just eat the eggs on their own.
Your other option is to just siphon them out. Can I breed blood parrots with
anything else?
So with blood parrots because the females are fertile, they can be
crossbred. You would need a fertile male of a different species. Usually you would
use a South or Central American cichlid of a similar type. With this
though, you always, we always like to promote responsible breeding so always
make sure you do a lot of research and you're really committed to, you know,
what your getting yourself into,
what your project is,what you plan to do. What's the difference between
a jelly bean parrot and a short body convict? The short body convicts,
Jelly bean parrots, the King Kong parrots... that's a pretty complex subject and that's
one we can get into on another day. So we'll make another video on that one
and we really look forward to that, getting into a little bit more detail on
different types of blood parrots.
Alright guys, well I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope it answered some of your
questions that you guys had about blood parrots. If you guys liked the video give
it a thumbs up and thank you guys. Have yourself a great day.