She will sometimes eat these flakes if they are small enough that she can do so without swallowing her fry.
Typically, drop the flake in there and give her a little while to eat it. If she does not eat it, take the food out so it does not cloud the water. Also, she may eat some flakes during the last week of keeping the fry in her mouth.
Some people have speculated that she is actually feeding the fry with these flakes. If you do not remove the female, she will often go into hiding. If you do not see a fish during feeding time for several days, it may be that she is hiding down in the rock work.
As stated previously, she will not eat while holding the eggs so do not expect her to come out during feeding. The female will typically wait weeks before allowing the fry to become free swimming. She may allow them to re-enter her mouth if they are threatened, but eventually they will be on their own. African cichlids tend to be very aggressive, especially mating dominant males. If you have cichlids, you probably will notice that one male in each species will become dominant and will wreak havoc on the other males and females.
This behavior becomes intensified during the mating process -- I have often seen a male cichlid that usually only bothered his own species start chasing anything and everything in the tank when he knew a female was ready to lay her eggs.
If you start to see your male go crazy, it may very well be that he is getting ready to mate. It is also important to generally provide females per male. This forces the male to spread his aggression and chasing around, thus allowing the other females some rest. If you put a ratio of male to female African cichlids in your tank, that one female will be chased nonstop and will eventually die. A popular method for getting the female to release the fry early is called stripping.
This is used by breeders in order to ensure the fry are not released into the main tank and in order to force the female to not become so weak.
However, stripping can be quite stressful to a female as you are catching her, forcing her jaw open, and then dipping her in and out of the water so the fry can swim out. In general, letting the female go to term is the best choice. The first thing you need to do before mating your cichlids is to ensure that your cichlids have reached sexual maturity. If the females are not big enough, it does not matter how much the male shakes, she is not going to mate with him. If, however, your females are big enough, there are several things you can do to entice them to mate.
Mouth brooders typically mate on a flat, clean rock. Therefore, it is imperative that you provide them will several of these. They also prefer them to be in secluded areas of the tank so try to match this condition as well. Many cichlids cannot resist mating after a water change. These fishes are very active and have a high metabolic rate, so a large-volume filter with good biological filtration capacity should be provided.
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. The aquarium for African mouthbrooding cichlids should always be as large as possible in order to provide its occupants with sufficient space to evade the high aggression.
African mouthbrooding cichlids swim close to the substrate and rarely go far from it. A traditionally proportioned aquarium, in which the height and width are around half the length e. A mature female will have up to 30 eggs. The male fish has no part in the care and raising of young, and may happily eat the babies if he is present when they are released.
I suggest a gallon tank for the mother and babies. Make sure the new tank is fully cycled and give it lots of tiny hiding places for the babies. You can also try providing small hiding places for the baby fish in your main tank, but in my experience the adult fish find ways to eat the babies.
If you intend to breed your fish, you should only get one species from any given genus. So for instance you might have 5 Pseudotropheus socolofi and 5 Melanchromis chipokae, but you wouldn't want to get any more Pseudotropeus or Melanochromis. Sometimes Mbuna of the same genus but different species will interbreed and the offspring are either ugly, sterile or both.
I don't follow this rule with my tank, but I pay attention to which fish are breeding and only save the fry from same-species pairings. Also, I've found that if you provide a male and at least one female of each species, you don't have to worry as much because the fish do prefer their own species.
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