Terms of the hobby
Flowerhorn glossary
The flowerhorn world has its own vocabulary, borrowed from Malay, Chinese, Thai and English. Here is what the words mean.
- Culling
- Removing fry that don’t show desirable traits during grading. Responsible breeders sell culls as pet-grade fish. See breeding.
- Divider breeding
- Separating a potential pair with a clear or mesh partition so they can see each other without fighting, until both are ready to spawn.
- F0, F1, F2, F3, F4
- Generation labels, mostly used for Kamfa. F0 is the original cross, F1 its offspring and so on. Not strain names. Later generations are generally more fertile and less pure.
- Faders
- Golden Base flowerhorns that are born dark and gradually lose their black coloring to reveal gold, yellow or orange.
- Flower
- The row of black blotches running along the side of a flowerhorn. Its shape, thickness and continuity are graded, and in feng shui the pattern may be read as characters or numbers.
- Golden Base / Golden Monkey
- One of the founding flowerhorn lines, known for gold and yellow color. A hardy, affordable choice.
- Grading
- Sorting young fish by quality, repeatedly, as they grow. The main criteria are kok, flower, pearling, color, body shape and eyes.
- Hard head
- A firm kok built from fatty tissue, typical of Zhen Zhu lines. Tends to hold its shape.
- Hua luo han 花羅漢
- The Chinese name for the flowerhorn: “flower luohan.” Often shortened to luohan or louhan.
- Kamfa
- A prized strain with a square body, very large kok, heavy pearling and often a sunken eye, developed by crossing flowerhorns with Vieja cichlids. Sometimes spelled Kam Fa.
- Kok
- The hump on a flowerhorn’s forehead; the scientific term is nuchal hump. Usually develops between 6 and 12 months. Its size is the single biggest factor in a fish’s value and feng shui significance.
- Luohan 羅漢
- The Chinese term for an arhat, an enlightened Buddhist saint, and a common shorthand for the flowerhorn.
- Pearling
- Iridescent white or blue-green spangles on the scales, fins and face. Heavy, even pearling is a mark of quality, especially in Zhen Zhu and Kamfa.
- Red Dragon / SRD
- Lines bred for solid red coverage. SRD stands for Super Red Dragon, the most saturated grade.
- Short body
- A flowerhorn with a compressed, rounded body, also called balloon. Popular but prone to swim bladder problems.
- Thai Silk
- A Thai-developed line with a metallic white to silver-blue sheen, sometimes sold as Titanium.
- Water head
- A large, softer kok filled more with fluid than fat, typical of Kamfa. Can look spectacular but may shrink with stress or age.
- Wet pet
- Hobby slang for large, interactive fish, cichlids especially, that behave more like pets than ornaments. See the fish that acts like a dog.
- Zhen Zhu (ZZ)
- “Pearl” in Chinese. One of the founding flowerhorn lines, known for heavy pearling and a firm kok.