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I want to breed somthing, i like electric blues and this other one i saw to day that was the same blue but with a yellow stripe instead. i have an empty 75g. Another thing is that i dont whant a huge colony of fish. I have never had malawis befor i have only owned americans that stay loyal when breeding. What othe fish are similar to the electric blues? Are they easy to breed? can they be bred in pairs? How do i breed them?

any mbuna or hap will breed and stay healthy as long as there are at least 3 females for every male. pick any, seriously! if the tank is kept clean and a few hiding spots, you will have a batch of fry being delivered every month. you could breed malawi's in a styrofoam cup (just a joke, but really it is that easy.) the only hard part is dealing with all of the fry once they arrive. they need to be seperated, which means another tank for them to grow up in. etc. etc...go through the profile at malawimayhem.com or cichlid-forum.com and check out ones you like. armkes.com has some great pictures of fish to check out. if you are going to breed them for sale, you should get a male from one source and grab a few females from another to prevent inbreeding. check your sources though, some people are very picky about where you get your fish from.

That easy a

no doubt! i just got a batch of yellow labs this afternoon. the hardest part was getting her out of the tank and into the growout. the only reason i was able to catch her without taking all the rocks out of the main tank was she was so tired from carrying those eggs for 25 days. only got about 15 from her this time around.

Hello There,

I agree. Breeding a lot of cichlids, be they African, American or from wherever, is really just a matter of letting them do what has been ordained by God's design. With some cichlids, other than the usual tank maintenance, there isn't much that the aquarist needs to do in order to promote spawning. I have bred Angels and Discus in the past, and am currently breeding Copadicrhomis Borleyi, which are Malawi cichlids...as most folks here probably already know.

As has already been noted here by Acei, unlike Angels and Discus, a lot of African cichlids do not form bonded pairs, which I find sad. So, as Acei noted, you really do need to have at least a few females per male, as due to the aggressive nature of some male African cichlids -- like the one I am currently breeding -- he will wear out, injure, or possibly even kill the female. Having a trio of females or more, will disperse his aggression, and give the females a bit of rest. Still, once they do spawn, it is good to take the female out of the main breeding tank, and put her in her own tank where she can rest and brood her eggs. I have two small 7 gallon tanks set up for this purpose.

I had what I thought was one male and three females, but it turns out that one turned out to be another male. The dominant male nearly killed the subdominant male before I removed him and gave him his own tank. Now he is developing his adult colors beautifully.

We had a spawn on May 21st -- 12 eggs total -- and eight have survived the most crucial period, and are now almost a month old from the day that the eggs were spawned. Sadly, one rocks back and forth for some reason -- maybe an equilibrium problem -- so we call him "Rocker". Another has a bent tail, and it looks like we may eventually lose it. The other six are looking very healthy though, and are about three quarters inch in size.

Just yesterday, this same female spawned again, only 27 days since her first spawn. She is now peacefully in her holding tank and brooding her eggs. I have no idea how many yet, as I don't wish to harvest her eggs. What I found very interesting is that she spawned at the exact same hour as last time -- 1 o'clock in the afternoon -- and boy was the male glowing like a lightbulb. I knew she was getting very close, but it was a visiting friend who noticed "Malojloj's" bright colors and asked me if he had always been like that -- very bright orange like a carrot with his metallic blue head. I looked over and said something like "Whoah! No wonder! They are in the middle of spawning!".

Last time, I felt sorry for the female -- "Malawi" -- so offered her food the second day, and she promptly spit her eggs in order to get the food. So I incubated the eggs myself in a small jar in the holding tank. One egg I somehow lost during a transfer. Another succumbed to fungus. Two more eventually died. So we have the eight with the two sickly ones.

Anyway, again, breeding African cichlids isn't that difficult, and is quite interesting, and so different from some South American cichlids.

Sorry for being so wordy, but that's me! I am a writer!

Mr. Syklyd



[span class="edited"][Edited by Sir Syklyd 2004-06-18 05:34][/span]

Hey

Sorry but how can you tell the dif between the male and female?
Iv got pleanty of rock work will that do?
im getting more done this week end!

what kind of fish do you have? every species has different males and females.