Comment

Comment by Janet Little on May 20, 2013 at 10:10am

I would like to mention a sad experience I had with a female with babies in her mouth. If you remove a female she will be in distress and release the babies into the net and with her thrashing about the babies may be flung all around killing them and making you sad. I now leave the babies until I can see them feeding and mostly making it on their own and then move them to a safe tank. My last batch I got 350 fry all healthy and the adults cant seem to catch them if you have some hiding places.

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on April 30, 2013 at 5:28pm

Regarding leaving the eggs to brood with the female. This is the natural way to do this and many people prefer it. However I liketo have a bit more control so I relieve her of that duty and do it artificially using the technique described in this paper with great success: http://bit.ly/ZESh8I

Also removing the eggs immediately kicks her back into the breeding cycle reducing the time till her next batch. 

Comment by Dave & Yvonne Story on April 27, 2013 at 4:34pm

Sorry to say.. these are big/old. When i first see them hatched, I can only see the black eye.

Comment by WaterFish22 on April 27, 2013 at 3:50pm

I have 40 new blue tilapia fry fish. One of my fish had eggs in it mouth and I woke up and the angel fish were going nuts. Luckily not to many got eating up. I have 2 other fish full of eggs. This is just my first batch. I hope at least 20 or so survive. I need more fish to fill up my larger tanks. I'm not sure on how to breed certain fish yet, to get my own color...

Comment by Conrad Chin-Yee on April 18, 2013 at 3:43am

What is the best filtration set up for a 150 gallon breeding aquarium?

Comment by wes on April 17, 2013 at 8:17am

Here is some great info for you. Read below or just goto the site link for the full page.

http://www.biology-resources.com/fish-tilapia-01.html

If a female enters the territory, she may be attacked in the same way but when she fails to respond, the male changes his behaviour pattern to a slow, swimming movement, with body tilted downwards, leading her towards the pit he has dug There may follow a courtship pattern, which varies very much with the species, but often consists of quivering movements or swimming round and round in the nest-pit, while the male butts at the protruding genital tube of the female.

Such an elaborate behaviour pattern ensures that sperms are shed at the moment that eggs are laid, thus increasing the chances of fertilization. In the substrate spawners, the eggs are laid singly and they at once stick to the pebbles or sand in the nest pit. With each batch of ten or more eggs, the male swims over them, shedding sperms, and so fertilizes them. From 50 to 700 eggs may be laid according to the age and size of the female. In many species, both parents remain at the nest.

During this time, one of them will guard the nest by driving off intruders, expel debris which falls into the pit and remove infertile eggs which might become a source of fungal infection. The parent also aerates the eggs by creating a current of water with its fins.

After a few days, the young hatch and may be taken up in the parent's mouth to be transferred to a different pit. Here the young fish stick to the substrate by a pair of mucous glands on the head while they use up the yolk remaining from the egg. If they try to leave the nest singly, the parent snaps them up and spits them back into the pit, but eventually they all leave the nest together, swimming as a school and following the parent for a week or more before they become independent.

In the mouth brooders, the courtship pattern is followed by spawning in which the female lays perhaps hundreds of eggs in the nest and these are immediately taken up into the mouth. The male sheds sperms over the eggs or over the place where they were laid and the female takes this up too, so that fertilization will occur in the mouth. The female is then chased away by the male who may at once start courting other mature females. For about ten to twelve days the female carries a mouthful of eggs or young fish. The breathing movements are restricted and feeding is not attempted. If the young fish swim out of the mouth they are snapped up again but after about ten days the mother ejects them in swarms. These swarms form a school and follow the mother. In some species the youngsters will return to the mouth if danger threatens; the mother "calls" them by swimming slowly backwards.

      The accounts given above are based on observations in aquaria and are very generalized; in fact, there is considerable variation in behaviour between the species of cichlids, e.g. in some mouth brooders it is the male which carries the eggs and young, and certain species do not dig nests until after courtship and pair formation, when it may be the female who does most of the work.

Comment by Bryan Acred on April 17, 2013 at 7:01am

My concern is whether the male or female would start eating the fry once they are out of her mouth. I would love to be able to just leave the female in the tank with the fry.

Comment by Larry Reinhardt on April 16, 2013 at 4:52pm

I leave them alone as long as there are places for her to hide, if she gets to battered them move her.

Comment by Bryan Acred on April 16, 2013 at 11:59am

Provided the female has already release the fry from her mouth of course.

Comment by Bryan Acred on April 16, 2013 at 11:56am

@Larry Once they spawn, should I remove the male and female? 

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