Red dragon flowerhorn

Care at a glance

Overview

Red dragon is a seller's description, not a certified strain. What arrives under the name differs between farms and between siblings out of one spawn. Fish are graded on red coverage, pearling and head shape, and Super Red Dragon or SRD is the name used for the premium tier of the red dragon line. A juvenile changes a great deal before it finishes, so the grade at purchase is a forecast.

In the wild

Flowerhorns are man-made hybrids with no wild population anywhere. Breeding dates to 1993, and the fish appeared on the Malaysian aquarium market in the late 1990s. The base stock was Central American cichlids, red devil and trimac, crossed with the blood parrot brought in from Taiwan. Red dragon is one of the later commercial lines out of that stock, and its cross has never been published.

Good to know

Because the base is a hybrid mix, red dragons do not breed true and every spawn gets graded and culled. Color, pearling and head shape do not travel together, so two fish out of one pair can look unrelated. The forehead lump, properly a nuchal hump and called the kok, is a normal male feature rather than a deformity.

Common questions

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