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After having Kribs for a while now and the male seemingly showing no interest in the female no matter how much she flirted with him, they've finally bred (It seems a move round of the plants and rocks to make a smaller cave after a big tank clean did the trick).

I'm after any advice please, as this will be my first breeding. I'm aware/preparing myself that their first attempt may fail, but I have my fingers crossed that it will be first time lucky And if not hopefully it will be the start of many succesful breedings!

What I'd like to know is: how long does it take for the eggs to hatch? I've only noticed them today (Wednesday) and the pairs behaviour has definitely changed from yesterday so I'm sure this is the day they've bred. Should I get specific fry food for the babies or will they be happy with whatever leftover food particles they find in the water? Should I increase/decrease/keep to the usual water change routine? I'm worried that with them being so small I'll accidentally suck them up - should I just remove water from the surface to avoid them?

Any other advice gratefully received, but for now I'm off to watch them!!

Congrats!
If everything goes well, frys should be emerging in 3 days (or a bit longer, depends on the tank temp). Newly hatched frys are very small. They might take liquid fry food. In my case, I did not feed them anything. My tank is "mature" so the frys could always find something to nibble. When they're big enough, I started to feed them with newly hatched baby brineshrimps. They grew very fast with this.

Kribs are great parents. They spend a lot of time moving the frys around and defending them. You can wait until them putting all the frys back into the cave (which they do every night) to clean the gravel. I did not change my water changing routine.

Here's a link you may find some interresting info:
http://www.justbajan.com/pets/fish/species/krebensis/index.htm

Good luck!

It may take them a couple of times to get it but once they do they don't stop. Mine would breed again within a few weeks of a spawn, even if they still had fry in the tank. Kribs are easy to breed and if you give the fry their own tank to grow out in you, after a couple of months you will have a constant supply of kribs to trade at you LFS.

chris

grats! how exciting!!! I hope they do live.

The pottery that growls!

Thanks for the info. At the moment I'm a little concerned that the female may have blocked herself in the cave! Last night, she came out at feeding time for food, however she didn't tonight. The cave they have set up in is simply a flat rock on top of the substrate, where some of the substrate at one end was removed forming a 'cave' (if that makes sense). The female has gone in and excavated it further to make a nice little hollow underneath, but she appears to have not moved the gravel all of the way out of the cave, effectively sealing herself in there. She may just be able to squeeze out on her side, but it looks pretty tight to me. Am I worrying needlessly or do you think I should create a slightly larger exit for her? I don't want to disturb the nest. Can fish be that stupid?

Yup, fish can be that stupid, I had some bumphead cichlids several years ago squash their entire batch of fry by undermining a nearby rock.

A bit of an update - the fry are now out of the cave and swimming around with the parents It looks as though this pair have managed to crack it first time!! So far anyway......

Just after a little more long term advice please. At a guess, I think there are around 20-30 of them - far too many for my tank in the long term. At what point is it safe to remove them from their parents? My hopes are that I can find a LFS that will take them, although I wouldn't mind keeping a couple myself. Should I wait until the parents start showing aggression towards their offspring? Will this be too late?

Any other advice on juveniles that I may not have thought of will be gratefully accepted as this is my first succesful breeding of fish.

How big is your tank? You may need a grow out tank of 29G or more for your batch of frys to grow to the size acceptable by the LFS. Good luck finding a new home for them. Meanwhile, just enjoy the amazing interaction between the krib parents and frys.

I've got a 29G, tank mates are the 2 kribs (+ fry), 2 kuhli loaches (rarely seen), 6 Harlequin Rasboras, 4 Amano shrimp and a BN. Could the fry live in that until they were big enough? How big is big enough?

Had a little scare last night. I looked away from the tank for a while, when I looked back the BN was where I'd last seen the family and Mum and Dad weren't looking happy with no fry to be seen. I even noticed that Mum seems to have a cut to her side and Dad and the BN have bitten fins, so I presume there was a bit of a fight. There was a good while where I couldn't see any fry, and I feared for the worst. I spotted a few fry hiding in a crevice and the parents on their regular sweeps of the area eventually found them and took them back to the cave, but I feared that many had been lost.

Good news!! I've had word that there were "lots of babies gathered around the heater. Probably as many as there were before the attack." I've not seen it myself as they're all back in their cave by the time I got back from work but it sounds like good news.

Hope your frys are doing well. I don't think the other fish in your tank are of any threat to the babies at all. Your kribs are fully capable of defending them. On the contrary I'm a bit concern about your other fish. As kribs can become very aggressive when they're breeding.

Unfortunately, kribs are easy to breed and lfs are usually picky with them. They will only accept young kribs with good color and relatively big size (1.5 inches plus). Not sure if this is the same case in UK.

With a 29G tank, and if all your frys survive, at one point you'll have to move some of them to other tanks. You still have a few months to plan that.

I seem to be gradually losing fry. Not really sure what is causing it, but each morning there seems to be a decrease. I think my initial estimate was wrong, there must have been at least 40-50. After the last update, I managed to count 19, this has then gone to 16, 12, 10, 9 and now 8. I haven't seen anything eating them, the mother takes them to a cave every night before lights out, where only the kuhlis could fit in, but I can't imagine mum letting them anyhere near the fry. Although I don't want to lose any of the fry, at least I should be able to leave any survivors to grow out in that tank?

The other inhabitants seem fine. The kribs do chase them away, but the kuhlis remain hidden away, the shrimp have found a corner of the tank to remain in out of the way, the rasboras are too fast and only get chased rarely (so I don't think they're stressed), and the BN can more than look after himself - in fact whenever the kribs come to cross paths with the BN its the kribs that I worry for.

My baby kribs survived the first two week in a tank with a 6 inch nicaraguense cichlid, 4 rainbows. After two weeks, when the parents are having a hard time to protect 40 plus fast swimming frys, I moved the nicaraguense and rainbows to another tank.

If your water quality is good in your tank, the only question I have is the food source. What do you feed your frys with?

Ah, now I'm concerned that it's my doing. From one of the early posts, I didn't get any specific food for the fry. The tank is about 2 years old now, so I considered it mature. The fry do spend their whole time scouring the plants and rocks. I've also seen the parents spitting food at the fry and they seem to be feeding on it. Have I screwed up here?

Having said that, I have just watched in horror as the BN seems to have taken some of the fry. I don't think he was particularly hunting them, but they just didn't get out of the way as the BN was scouring the floor for food. The parents just made warning darts at the plec as it approached, but didn't actually attack until the plec had already been through the group of fry. The aftermath is still going on now, but I've only managed to spot 4 fry so far. I'm hoping that the others have gone into hiding and will re-appear by the morning.

If you want to breed the Kribensis, just place them on their own in a tank & as soon as they'll get used to the new place, they'll breed easily.

You are going to keep on losing fry & only the fittest will survive. The parents will protect them, but they cannot do much, with other fish in the tank.


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Member of the Malta Aquarist Society - 1970.
http://www.maltaaquarist.com

This may be a good thing for you if you are not ready to set up a grow out tank, this way you will not have to deal with 40-50 every few weeks. If you do want to grow them out you need to set up a second tank for them. An easy way to remove the fry are to syphon them into a bucket. I also suggest that you start feeding them. Start with some cyclopse eyze and then to newly hatched brine shrimp.


chris