[Bamboo]

Anyone have experience with dwarf pikes ? These came in and they absolutley awesome looking dwarfs . I'm thinking they came in from Columbia but I'm not 100 % sure . Do dwarf pikes prefer schooling/ shoaling ? Anyone ever got them on pellets or one would be stuck with frozen foods ? Anyone experience with these " indira " in particular or any dwarf pikes , I would like to get some tips . Much appreciated .

 

[dwarfpike]

Nope, no experience with dwarf pikes at all ...

(real post to come after dinner).

 

[dwarfpike]

It seems the term sp. Iniridae dwarf is a new description ... so I'm not sure which of the various dwarf pikes from Colombia it is. There are three possibilities: Cr. wallacii, Cr. sp. Orinoco dwarf, and cf. notophthalmus. I'd need to see pics of the female with an extended dorsal fin to tell the difference though.

Others have gotten them on pellets, I have not. I did get compressiceps on flakes though. I still had to use frozen foods though, they lost too much weight on a flake/freeze-dried diet.

They are much like the larger pikes, just in a smaller package. They school when fry/early juvy's and don't like either other much as adults. Luckily, with the smaller size, they do less damage than than the big boys. You can usually catch it in time to remove some (except for compressiceps).

 

[clgkag]

I have wallacii and they take both flake and pellet. I throw in the occasional treat of frozen mysis schrimp. Just like the larger pikes on a smaller scale. I have 4(3 females and 1 male) in a 42" x 16" footprint and they do pretty well. The females each have their own territory and the male cruises the whole tank.

 

[Bamboo]

I looked at another website , there seems to be an " indira 1 , 2 , and 3 . " I guess that's a locale name ? I will most likely give these guys a wurl , the more I look at them the more fascinated I am by them . Although $30 - $75 a fish is sure steep.

 

[dwarfpike]

All three of the sp. indira are larger, sax-type pikes and not dwarf pikes.

My guess would be the indira dwarf is just a trade name for the cf. noto ... but without seeing them it's just a guess. Of course, other full sized pikes have been given the trade name dwarf before ... 'orange dwarf' is one trade name for the large Xingu 1 ...

 

[remi]

I would really like to see pics of these guys.

opcorn:

 

[Bamboo]

Ask and you shall recieve .... what do you think these are ?

 

[dwarfpike]

Definately a dwarf pike species ... I blew up both pics, and didn't see any obvious females though so can't be sure as to which species. Either they are all males, or in your pics the females just had their dorsals folded down.

 

[Bamboo]

Maybe the importer kept all the females for breeding ? Or , when going pike collecting are there more males than females in the rivers ?

 

[clgkag]

Look like what I got as wallacii. It took a couple days for the dorsal spots to show up.

 

[dwarfpike]

It could just be that in the pics, none of the females had their dorsal extended. IME, the females don't flare all that much and the spots are hard to see when the dorsal is laying down against the body.

It's a good chance they are Cr. wallacii. They are the most common of the dwarves coming out of Colombia. Unfortunately, all the males of those species look almost identical. Hence why seeing a pic of the female with the dorsal extended would be needed to give a shot at their identity.

If the female has an orange rimmed dorsal spot, it's a Cr. wallacii. If it's a red rimmed spot, it's the cf. noto. If it has a red rimmed spot and a thick red line through the dorsal, it's the sp. orinoco dwarf.