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After a rocky time with some fish -- we've had some casualties due to a really aggressive Yellow Lab male -- I ended up with a pair of Yellow Labs. Today I saw them doing their little mating dance on a rock for about an hour. The female is now holding. None of the other fish seems to bother her. Should she be moved? My only option is a 10 gallon that I'm currently keeping a couple of corrys and a goldfish in. It is both heated and filtered, and I could clean the gravel and do a water change once a week if I needed to move the pregnant Lab in there. Any suggestions?

[font color="#000080"]If you do decide to move her wait a couple of days till she is about to release, then move her in. After she releases put her back in the normal tank, leaving the fry in the 10g. Then you can raise the fry in the 10g till they reach a large enough size to either sell, put in the normal tank etc.
Hope that helped

How long will she "hold" the eggs/fry. I think I read something about 3 weeks, or so. Is this right?

Yes it is 3 weeks. I was in the smae situation with my Yellow Labs and it worked out perfect. So it is a good idea to take the mom out after about two and a half weeks.

Do you actually want to save the fry? If so, you can remove her like people are suggesting. Three weeks is about a minimum for the holding period. It can be longer, closer to 4 or even 5 weeks depending. I'm told water temperature influences this time period, but there could be other factors at play. My labs seem to hold just under 4 weeks. Also, if this is your females first brood, don't be surprised if she loses it within the first couple weeks...it's a somewhat common occurance.

I have a 75G Malawi tank with L. caeruleus (Electric Yellow) and P. acei, so there's almost a guarantee that one of them is holding at any given time. Right now I've got 4 female labs holding and one female Acei who recently released her fry. I usually do not remove my females from the main tank for two reasons - 1) I have no desire to save the fry and 2) There are enough hiding spots that they can remain most unharassed during the holding period.

The funny thing is that as I type this, I have 2 fry currently in the main tank fighting for survival - 1 lab and 1 acei who've managed to avoid being made a snack. I've had this happen before, but they usually only last a few days. These two have stuck around for well over a week and are pretty savvy about getting bits of food and then hiding again. Who knows... I may end up with two more fish.

If you make it as far as getting the fry into a grow out tank, you can feed them things like crushed flake food or baby brine shimp (BBS). I have one of those cheapy BBS factories that allow you to hatch them out within a day or so. It seemed to work out well for my last batch of lab fry.