Giant Kribensis

Geographic Origin and Biotope: Southwestern tropical Africa (essentially the slow river systems of Nigeria and Cameroon, often found together with forms of *P. pulcher*). Swims in the dark and weak currents of secondary streams shaded by trees, where the pH plummets due to the immense deposits of rotting plant matter.

Taxonomy and Morphology: Long considered a chromatic variant of the Pulcher, the *sacrimontis* (known commercially for decades as Pelvicachromis sp. aff. pulcher) is a much stockier fish. Males easily exceed 10 cm (4 inches), equipped with a very high body, robust and thickened fins, a very marked eye and stocky terminal mouth. A "dwarf" become a compact colossus of the rivers.

Social Behavior: Territorial prevaricator ethology. Unlike the mild cousin Pulcher, the *Sacrimontis* claims very vast portions of the bottom (about 60-80 cm / 24-32 inches of clear area) with implacable violence against all competitors and bottom detritivores. Aggressiveness is tenfold before and during reproduction, where they transform into true tyrants that will dig huge and heavy trenches in the sand under roots, moving considerable volume to barricade the lair.

Coloration and Sexual Dimorphism: One of the best chromatic spectacles of the dark continent. (Exists in various local forms ('morphs') such as Green, Yellow and Red). The "Red Morph" male has gill opercula, lower jaw, throat and entire belly bathed in a very vivid dye of FIRE CARMINE RED or opaque live blood, topped by an olive-gray back dark scaled and fins sumptuously bordered with iridescent pink snows and blue stripes. The female is formidable: smaller (7-8 cm / 3 inches) does not possess a red throat, but an abdomen that explodes in a deep purplish, golden ocelli scattered on the jagged black fins, and a showy and unmistakable thick black band that cuts her longitudinally into two halves in an attitude of submission or brooding.

Tank Setup: Demands a vast Amazonian/river aquarium. Base tank of 100 cm (40 inches) warmly recommended to placate its ire towards neighbors. Fine sand essential, since the formidable diggers would destroy their snout removing heavy pointed stones. Set up the bottom not with live rocks but with inextricable dark titanic tangles of twisted bog logs and branched woods and half-buried dark terracotta dens to break the view between similar or companions into multiple separate segments and calm the asphyxiating bellicose instinct in large spaces of dim attenuated light.

Feeding and Diet: Formidable omnivorous micro-predator but one that needs fiber (benthic grazer). Swallows everything foraging fiercely in the sand, but a wrong captive diet makes it heavily obese and fatally ascitic enlarged liver deadly pale intoxicated to death by blockages sick and constipated. To be fed peremptorily with balanced pure spirulina flakes, dry green pasture algae and excellent sinking granules softened very rich in crustaceans and astaxanthin and thickened by fresh and frozen whole prey such as abundant bloodworms white larva succulent tubifex.

Water Quality: Rainforest blackwater. The Sacrimontis fears alkalinity. Hard waters fade the reflections and annul the abortive female ovarian prospering. Gh from 2 to 8 maximum amber osmotized and clean tannic and ACIDIC pH and strictly kept below 7.0 (ideal range 5.5-6.5). Mechanical filtration of the highest quality since it moves silt and raises phosphates polluting if badly disposed of clouding the water with the risk of patinas and fatal asphyxiating respiratory bacterial fungal lethargic furious fatal pale explosions in dissolved fin necrosis worn out stressed on the ground by ammonia.

Compatibility and Cohabitation: Inclusion model at extreme risk for the bottom. Highly unadvisable to put them with small families of slow Amazonian Apistogramma or slender peaceful blind-nosed corydoras catfish: the annoyed Sacrimontis will bite them, pulling out eyes and whiskers with sad fierce mutilations to deaf torn fins in lethal agony. They must share a large immense water column only in mixed communities in company flanked in high layers to thick very fast very robust untouchable colored schools of large Congo Tetra characins huge or thick schools of Barbus cyprinids indifferent unreachable in the reassuring free sky in high exploratory swimming of surveillance fleeing lethal encounters to the obscured ground dominated by the giant angry red cichlid unique tyrannical master.

Aquarium Reproduction: Secret species with bitter cave spawning in inaccessible positions ('Cave-Spawner'). Marvelous indissoluble monogamous. After exhibitionist dances with bell vibration waving the belly to the male enchanted by the incandescent red-purple bride mature swollen with eggs, they will assiduously clean blind underground roofs laying endless sumptuous inverse attached rosaries of over three hundred little ones in blind cave dug as an asphyxiating sandy fortress armoring the crushed little trench spitting pebbles to the point of exhaustion to barricade cracks in furious incessant silt shovelfuls with the lips and erecting impassable bastions to conquer until microscopic compact hordes fiercely guided in aggressive bellicose troops strolling compact with maternal protective ferocity and deaf decapitating bites to big enemies in the aquarium for weeks starving at the pasture of fresh hatched brine shrimp nauplii.

Risks and Diseases: Lethality deriving from the deadly violent vascular intolerance of spouses and matings imposed without the vital life-saving escape route of desperately exhausted reclusive females asphyxiated without thick saving ravines fleeing exhausting annihilated by the big nervous furious males if the broods abort for busted waters. Disastrous the intestinal swelling Ascitic Bloat irremediably lethally mortal occlusive for algal or vegetable deficiencies necessary to balance the abstinence of excess whole worms rotten poisoning rich putrefied foods.