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Rainbows were moved into their new quarters this weekend and after a few days of frantic displaying and shaking(and a helpful batch of feeder guppies yesterday!), I was pleased to find eggs this morning! This female has laid eggs before but there was no male in the tank to fertilize them. This batch is bigger though, and Mr. Right is actually present. So I'm pretty excited to finally get some fry from these fish! Haven't really got much of a market for them around here so the fry will probably end up as feeders, but thats ok. I'm enjoying watching the process. These guys are always beautiful but their colors are just awesome right now. Here's some pics. My camera doesn't nearly do them justice so you'll just have to take my word for it!

Proud Papa w/ eggs

Female foreground, male behind

Great job! and Congrats! Did you purchase the pair from a breeder or a LFS? I haven't had much luck with finding anything other than the standards in any type of fish, much less in cichlids.

TTFN --->Ta-Ta-For-Now
Kelly ;o}

You have to keep us posted on their progress. My Angel keeps eating her eggs by the 3rd day, even since they've been put into a separate tank.

TTFN --->Ta-Ta-For-Now
Kelly ;o}

Very nice, you should have no problems raising these either.

I shipped a group of juvies from a breeder. Only got one male out of 12! But he has grown up so pretty.

The pair are staying busy keeping the other fish from the nest. Most of the time it seems that the male is guarding the nest and the female is looking out for intruders. One cichlid (a mbuna of some kind, I just stuck him in here until I can get him to the FS) is pretty nosy and he's much too strong for the female. She tries her heart out but rainbows aren't much for confrontation, usually they just display and make threats. So here comes the mbuna, pushing her back slowly towards the nest. Then the male will leap out, chase that nasty cichlid into a corner, and save the day. Yay! Cichlids are such interesting fish to watch.

A couple eggs went bad, turned white. Do I need to try and remove them?

Hmm.. now thinking maybe we've missed something as shouldn't these have hatched sooner? Well, I'll wait and see.

Yay! Not to worry... Parents cleaned up most of the ruined eggs today and the other eggs are starting to hatch as I type. We have wigglers.

Oh...cichlids are so cool. So eggs are still in process of hatching, about half way done now. Parents are working together sucking fry off of the vertical rock and placing them into their fry pit. They chose to dig up one of my plastic plants and put the babies in the plastic anchor. Pretty good idea, I thought... Some of the babies didn't quite make it into the anchor and they are just in a pile on the gravel. I think that that female is a lousy shot. Parents are getting extra, extra territorial now. Took some pics of the fry but its hard to see anything. Anyway, if you care to look you can almost, almost make out the pale brown fry stuck to the roots of this plant...Oh, for a nice camera....

Fry Day 1

So fry are about 6 days old now, I think? Fry have been free swimming for a couple days now. Yesterday siphoned some off. Tanganyikans say 'Yum!'. Well, there's more where that came from! Just letting them get a little bigger. May let parents raise a small group and see if we can get them to survive. Today's group looks a lot smaller than yesterday so thinking that the parents are having a hard time keeping tabs on these little guys. They are pretty erratic. They've been swarming around like crazy today. Both parents are pitch black in their warning/breeding colors and are very busy keeping the other fish driven up into the top corners of the tank. Female now guards the swarm while the male does most of the patrolling. Fry have stripes showing, how cool!

Great! Can you get a few pics? I know they won't cooperate, but... I want to see the babies!

TTFN --->Ta-Ta-For-Now
Kelly ;o}