Baby Malawi Cichlids

[brotherluv]

Has anyone had experience with these cichlids having babies without you noticing?  My wife found 2 babies yesterday ...one is definitely a blue cobalt baby and one appears to be a peacock...the parent fish are only 5 months old. Is this normal?  Also, they are slightly less than 1 inch long, should I be tearing apart the tank to move them until they are bigger?  Will my 3-4 inch cichlids kill them?

[drew675]

seperate them, i had some that would produce babies regularly. once they are out and swimming they become food, if you have enough hiding spots in your tank that only the babies can fit in they might survive.

[brotherluv]

There seems to be plenty of hiding spaces...I'm going to keep an eye on these little guys and keep my finfers crossed...now that I know the older fish are capable of producing offspring I'm going to try and be more aware and try to get them to have the babies in a QT tank...I'm going to do more research on how to care for the fry properly as these survivors are somewhat of a fluke.

[drew675]

what i used to do is as soon as i noticed the fish was brooding i would wait a few weeks, then i would pull her out and manually make her release them into a fry net. That way there were no casualties.

[brotherluv]

That's some good advice!  I'll give it a try and hopefully sell some   I think the blue cobalts are well sought after!

[brotherluv]

Just an update...we found 4 more fry...2 more peacocks...1 more blue cobalt...and 1 rusty...they're not very shy.   They'll swim up to the glass and stare back at me.  Funny little fry!