A little update on the lives and loves a pair of my fish.
I’m not sure if I have ever shared this but I bought two Firemouth Cichlids when I started my big tank tank up, they were just 2cm at the time but as they developed they never did look anything like firemouths.
They turned out to be a pair and have the same fantastic parenting approach to eggs and fry as firemouth but have no hint of red on them, about the right size 15cm - but they ranged between olive green and almost canary yellow depending on their mood. The penny finally dropped, they are Rainbow Cichlids but as they dont seem to be very popular or common (not sure which) I had never seen them in shops.
Anyhoo, as they were breeding and had one managed to rear three of the fry in the main tank I thought it would be nice to give them a proper chance at raising a full brood.
They prefer to lay eggs on vertical rock surfaces having spent a few days cleaning the surface and creating a no-fly zone around the rock. Fertilisation occurs after the egg is attached and they take turns at slowly and carefully swimming in lines across the surface. The eggs are allowed to develop for a few days and then each one is removed by mouth (there are 300-400 eggs) and transferred as ‘eggs with tails’ to a hole that they have dug in the substrate. The eggs gradually develop into fry over the next week and form a thick moving grey clump while the parents watch over like hawks. As the fry develop further small streams of them start branching out from the clump, initially the parents suck the adventurous ones into their mouth and the spit them back into the clump but they also occasionally they move the whole clump to another hole.
The fry get gradually more active and the clump opens out and they start moving around in a tight cloud of fry. At this point I guess they will have not have lost a single egg, then suddenly the babies decide its time to SCATTER and you can guess what happens next. The parents still guard them as best they can and will round them up returning them to a safe corner but in a tank they stand little chance until they get above mouth size. Hence 350 eggs = 3 fish.
So this time about a week after hatching I carefully vacuumed the clump out having first removed the parents (I was fed up of being bitten) and transferred them to a 200 litre bare bottomed tank with a cycled sponge filter. I left the parents in with them for about eight weeks but removed them once I noticed the fry clustering around the female and nibbling at her dorsal fin. This started back in mid December, all the fry have survived and are now 3cm long and starting to show some colour.
I had added a large internal filter once they were large enough to not be sucked in and have been aiming for a 5ppm Nitrate level so I am now up to 160litre daily water change from a conditioned water tank (I’m getting quite slick at water changes) so it is about time for them to move to the big tank and then to a LFS.
Its been very enjoyable process to watch but I will probably shut the tank down for a while, but I’m rather hoping the Geophagus get around to spawning....
I will add some pictures to this but as I normally struggle I want to get the text in place first.
Oh and hey
@fcmf like the others said, no beating yourself up. No.1 is happy fish and you have that.
Topic: Think Fish Keepers Daily News. [2016-2019] (Read 207671 times) 1923 replies
February 15, 2022, 03:11:56 PM
