Neolamprologus Tretocephalus

By Rick Boester  2/2009

Neolamprologus Tretocephalus, “Trets”, have been a very rewarding yet challenging cichlid for me thru the years. I first picked some up in the early 70’s and they were described to me as a poor man’s Frontosa. Not sure where that came from but it has stuck in my brain ever since. Any one that knows me, knows I have a passion for fronts so this was a natural for me to try. Back to the “poor man’s Frontosa, in the 70’s Trets cost around $40 each but fronts ran $125 each. Many people couldn’t tell the difference between the 1.25’ fry so I guess they were aptly labeled.

Trets love any meat! When reading about Trets, I read their main diet was small snails but in reality they love frozen shrimp and frozen blood worms more.  They also relish small peacocks. I tried putting snails in their tank but they didn’t seem to pay them much attention unless I crushed them first. I feed frozen shrimp and frozen blood worms frozen. I do not let either thaw before feeding. Some where during my fish keeping years, I read that brine shrimp deteriorates very fast when thawed out, so I got in the habit of just rinsing the top blood off the frozen chuck and then throwing the chunk in the tank still frozen. I feed all my Tanganyikan’s in this manner. I have never had any troubles with any fish in doing this. I even do this with my peacocks once in a while, but will follow up 30 minutes later with green flake just to be cautious.

I have bred Trets 5 times in the last 35 years. I know you are thinking 5 times, anyone can breed a fish 5 times in 35 years. Well I haven’t always kept Trets in my tanks but always seem to go back to them after I get rid of them. Also Trets have double ovaries that are both active so they always have between 200-600 fry when they breed. The last spawning we counted 550 fry and there were still many left. I stopped counting and threw the rest in the tank. Because the spawn was so large, I took the parents out of their 125 gallon tank and all the other residents and left the tank for the babies to grow. What a site that was to see 600 fry growing in the tank by themselves. Well not quite by themselves as I had bristlenose plecos in with them. In fact I have bristlenose plecos in all my cichlid tanks.

Why do I call such a prolific fish challenging?  This is a very easy question for me to answer. I have never bred the same pair more than once. In every instance one of the mates would kill the other without fail. Male kills female or female kills male. It didn’t matter, one was always doomed.  I surely have been doing something wrong but for the life of me I don’t know what. The last time I even separated the two for two months and then introduced them back to a community 125 gallon tank. No luck, the male promptly killed the female.

Now the rewarding part!  Trets, after all these years, seem to still have a decent demand and that is important when selling so many fry! They aren’t near $40 each anymore but when you get $2-$4 for fry and $6-$10 for 2” young, they are worth giving them a shot or in my case keep going back to.