How long do mouth brooders

The aquarist can approximate our method by stocking one male and females in an adequately sized tank full of rocky nooks and crevices for the females and fry. Properly fed fish will not cannibalize fry that have adequate hiding places. Females will spawn approximately every 6 weeks if well fed. Most females will eat while incubating, but all usually lose weight during that time. It is important to feed a variety of high quality and palatable foods to keep your breeders in condition.

Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content Skip to footer There are two basic types of cichlid breeding systems: mouth-brooding and substrate spawning. On the other hand, in the case of sexually dimorphic species in which females and males have physical differences in terms of colouration or patterning , it can get a little more complicated. These are intended to trick the female into thinking that she has dropped some of her eggs.

She therefore goes to pick them up and the male ejects sperm into her mouth. This means that he now has a chance to fertilise some of the eggs that she is carrying. In the case of Malawi and Tanganyikan cichlids, a vast amount of hybridization between sub-species is present due to such behaviours. In order to be sure you get at least one male and one female, I recommend getting four or five fish of each species and then if you accidentally get two males, selling the one you like the least back to the pet store as soon as it starts displaying its male coloration.

Mouth-brooders like to be in a harem of the same species: one male and three or four females. The male will boss the females around but won't hurt them. Two mature males will shred each other until one dies. Net the fish and hold it upside down in your hand not for too long or it will suffocate in the air. Male fish have one obvious hole and one very small, barely detectable hole just past their anal fin.

Female fish have two equally sized holes. I've never been very good at judging this though, and the fish sold at pet stores are usually too young to sex this way anyway.

The substrate is unimportant for rock-dwellers Metriaclima, Tropheus, Pseudotropheus, Melanochromis, etc , but sand-dwellers e. Cyrtocara require sandy substrate at least in parts of the aquarium, so that they can sift it for food particles. The African mouthbrooding cichlids include species that feed only on Aufwuchs algae and the micro-organisms living therein in the wild, as well as piscivores, plankton-feeders, and all possible stages in between.

In the aquarium all the standard types of fish foods dry, frozen, and live are usually eaten greedily. It is particularly important for Aufwuchs-feeders Tropheus, Metriaclima, Pseudotropheus, Melanochromis, etc. When maintaining an aquarium for African mouthbrooding cichlids it is important to make sure the water is always clear, odourless, and rich in oxygen.

The main problem in the maintenance of these fishes is their high level of aggression. If only a few individuals are kept together then it commonly happens that after a while just one dominant individual remains, having killed all the other occupants of the tank.

For this reason it is a fundamental rule that the population should be as high as possible, ideally individuals of each species. The ratio of the sexes is of less importance, as subordinate males will exhibit female coloration and then be virtually ignored by the dominant individual.