African Mouthbrooders P. II

[ambushman2j]

Well, last time I tried taking yellow lab out on day 1, put her in her own tank with a 2nd holding lab, one kept eggs, one spit..the one which kept, held to term and spit on her own, about 3 weeks later, female is holding again, I am now on day 14 of holding, I see eyes in her mouth, this time I did it a little different tho, I took her out on day 12 from the tank..while she was in the tank with 10 other yellow labs, 8 chipokes and 4 fuelleborni, she was still eating!.. not big chunks but little bits of brine shrimp, I did not take this as a good sign, but sure enough she's been in a spit 10 gallon tank by herself for 2 days now and the bulge continues to grow.

Also, on the issue of stripping, art sent me some links where they say that stripping females is actually bad for the fry, when you strip them the fry tend to grow slower.. what's everyone's opinions on that?

[pegasus]

Personnally I  prefer not to strip,only because I'm lazy and prefer to let mom do her work.But, I will isolate her. If she does release her eggs while I'm attempting to capture her,that's what I would call "Natural stripping". Which does happen occasionally, in those cases I find there is some value in early egg release by the mother. First she can go back to feeding immediatly instead of a three week starvation. As for the fry, I've never seen a difference between natural delivery and stripping. In fact I would even say that there is a value to stripping since the fry will also start eating earlier. My reasonning is that as soon as the fry consume their yolk I'm the constant food supplier, otherwise the mother would have kept her fry another 5 to 8 days with limited food outings.
I've also heard that stripping steals the genetic instincts to reproduce  the proper way, in my 30 years of experience I have never seen this.
Michel

[Troy]

ambushman2j : Like pegasus I prefer not to strip my African Cichlids. I also isolate the female. But a few times I have transfered a female in to a dark container only to find she has released on The way to the 20gal tank. I think this is due to the chasing in the tank and the transfer to the dark bucket. The fatigue I think makes her spit them out. In the dark bucket alone she recovers by spitting the fry out. I leave her for 15 or 20 min and come back to the bucket and look in. Often I find fry.

On the first occasion one of my female Auratus was in a white bucket . For some reason I Put a flat stone in the bottom of the bucket. I think I was worried about her swallowing the fry.I wanted her to feel safe for the few minutes she was going to be in the bucket. When I returned there were the fry... I have also guess it maybe due to a lack of resperiation she was out of the water for a  minute.

I now practice this all the time .I have not lost any fry or seen any problems with the females or any problems with future females rearing.It is not 100% effective sometimes she holds no matter what.But it saves me from having to get females out of the growout tank in 2 or 3 weeks! This little trick of mine has worked with most of my Malawi Chiclids. You may want to try it your self.Just do the normal catching and then hold her in the net for a 20 second count. Then put her in a dark bucked with a dark stone.Leave for 15 minutes or put a cover on the bucket then look in. Presto the fry are out of the female and the two can be seperated very easily. Hope this helps..... Troy.