King Kong or Just Fat?

[dasaltemelosguy]

About 3 years ago I bought four baby Blood Parrots and my Oscar at a local PetSmart. They were all under an inch long then. 

Up to about Year-2, all of the parrots grew to 5"-6" in length. 

Over the past year (Year-3), one parrot started growing again at a very accelerated rate. Just this one parrot now measures over 9" head to tail!

Below are some shots of him. Would you guys know if somehow, I have one King Kong Parrot...or is he just really fat?!

For scale, the Oscar is almost 15" long. 

There’s a 40 second video of the parrot to see his movements too:

He's grown easily another inch since the video was shot.

I was under the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that King Kongs can close their mouths whereas these guys, Fatso included cannot. But I have no idea how to tell!  Thanks everyone. 

[lefty o]

i know nothing about blood parrots, but that is one obese fish!

[ScandiDefense]

That is a one big blood parrot! What did you feed him with? 

[dasaltemelosguy]

On 1/21/2023 at 12:41 AM, ScandiDefense said:

That is a one big blood parrot! What did you feed him with? 

I was just beginning in fishkeeping at the time and made many classic neophyte mistakes. One of which was not researching how large these fish might become!

So, until I learned a bit more, I fed them nothing special, Hikari, Tetra, whatever was on a big box store shelf. 

All 4 of the parrots were together with that oscar and all ate the same stuff. Eventually I learned a bit more and @Guppysnail helped me out tremendously with advice and she even sent me a wide variety of extremely high-quality foods. I did notice notable improvements in energy and color after the nutritional improvements from these but insofar as size alone, he was already this massive even on the 'junk foods' I gave him in my ignorance. 

Three of the parrots and the oscar grew to large but not atypical sizes (6" and 14"-ish). This one parrot is so much larger than the others, I began to wonder if he's a different variety, but I know very little about them. 

As you can see in the video, he's very aggressive and the other parrots he grew up with are not. His aggression never amounts to much as like the smaller parrots, he can't fully close his mouth to get in a good bite!

To be honest, aside from over filtration, (it's a 125G with a filter turnover of 2000GPH) and so many emergent plants the nitrates virtually never rise above 10PPM, given my slow learning curve, I doubt I've done much in an optimal manner. 

So, I thought perhaps a King Kong parrot slipped into the lot? I see pictures of King Kongs and he doesn't look exactly like them. Also, I've read they can fully close their mouths unlike blood parrots. But I'm no expert so I thought I'd see if anyone knew what he is!

[boylesdowntothis]

Diabetes! 🤣

 

[Odd Duck]

I know very little about parrots specifically, but when you are talking about hybrid animals in general, you can get very mixed genetics, and some hybrids will rather randomly end up larger than either parent.  There could also potentially be a hormonal issue?  That’s all I’ve got for you.

[dasaltemelosguy]

On 1/21/2023 at 11:39 AM, Odd Duck said:

I know very little about parrots specifically, but when you are talking about hybrid animals in general, you can get very mixed genetics, and some hybrids will rather randomly end up larger than either parent.  There could also potentially be a hormonal issue?  That’s all I’ve got for you.

Actually, I think you're probably spot-on. As you said, he's a hybrid...of something. In one shot above you can see he's even developing a nuchal hump so who knows what he is...aside from a mutt! Thanks!