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4 Common Blue Severum Questions Answered!

The severum cichlid is becoming an increasingly popular tropical freshwater fish to keep due to their bright colors and falling price tags with a large number of fish keepers adding a severum to their tanks.

As with most things in fish keeping, breeders are always trying to get unique patterns or colors for their fish and the severum cichlid is no different with a number of rare colors having been reliably produced by breeders over the years.

One of the latest additions to the severum color range is the blue severum that has gained a huge amount of interest recently due to it being such a rare color.

To date, we have not seen a single blue severum listed for sale online as the majority of the transaction are direct from breeder to collector and the number of breeders who are able to reliably produce blue severum is small so their price tags for the fish are high.

Still, a number of photographs of these rare blue severum have made their way online with some of them ending up going viral on social media due to the unique look for the fish.

This has cause a number of people to reach out and ask a number of different questions about keeping blue severum as well as about the various characteristics of the fish.

With there being such a large number of people reaching out and asking these questions each day, we have decided to publish this article going over the more common ones that we see.

Are Blue Severum Rare?

Blue severum are very rare and blue severum are currently believed to be the rarest type of the severum cichlid range.

Blue severum are so rare that it is actually difficult to even find a breeder who is able to reliably produce them with the colors ranging from dark blue to turquoise with either the full body, striped, or dotted patterns.

This has made some people question if blue severum are actually real or if it is just some digital trickery done to images of other, more common colors of severum.

In our opinion, there are plenty of photographs and videos showing the fish as well as a number of reports from reputable fish keepers from the community to make us believe that the fish is real and is being produced by severum breeders, just in very small numbers.

The majority of severum are either gold, red or green and it is believed that the blue severum is actually a color morph of the green severum that has been bred over a number of years through selective breeding to reliably produce the fish.

Similar to the metallic gold guppy about a decade again, it took around five years before the fish was mass produced and available to purchase online with the initial fish being kept by breeders to strengthen their breeding pool or sold for very high price tags to private collectors.

“Severum” by Chun’s Pictures is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich

Are Blue Severum Aggressive?

Due to blue severum being so rare there are not many reports to go by on their aggression levels but it is believed that they are considered a mildly aggressive fish similar to other severum cichlids but not as aggressive as some of the other commonly kept cichlid types.

Suitable tank mates for a blue severum will be the same as the other types of severum cichlids.

People commonly try to keep rare colored fish all in the same aquariums to keep the unique look of all of the fish in the tank but this is not recommended for blue severum as they can be somewhat aggressive to their tank mates, especially smaller fish.

If you do want to try to get some blue severum for your aquarium, be prepared to pay over the norma going rate for a normal colored severum and look to keep a severum only tank or keep the fish with other cichlids depending on the setup.

Although aggression to other fish from severum is above average, they tend not to hunt or harrass any snails in their tank and just leave the snails to do their thing.

If you are wanting to add an algae eater to your tank with blue severum then a snail species is definitely better than a fish species for the task as your severum will usually not pester the snails at all.

How Large Do Blue Severum Grow?

Blue and turquoise severum grow to around eight inches in length as adults with a small number of blue severum being able to grow as large as ten inches in length but this is rare.

Due to their size, blue severum do usually need a larger tank than most freshwater fish with their minimum tank size being around 50 gallons for a single blue severum and 100 gallons for two blue severum.

Conclusion

That brings our article going over the blue severum to an end. We hope that we have been able to help our readers with any questions that they have as we have seen a number of people reaching out each month and asking about the questions above. As the number of photographs shared on social media of the blue severum continue to increase, we only expect the number of people asking these questions to increase too so we hope that we have been able to help as many of our readers as possible.