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The Multies are breeding, the Multies are breeding!!

1K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  nmcichlid-aholic 
#1 ·
That's right - 'Lamprologus' multifaciatus - my multies have babies! Sure, most of you reading this are saying "if he's getting excited about multies spawning, he must really be a rookie..." Understandable, since multies are the fish equivalents of rabbits. It is exciting, though, and here's why:

I started with an adult trio (1M/2F) in a 10 gallon tank a little more than 3 years ago so my son would have a tank in his nursery. They started spawning almost immediately, and hadn't stopped since. Soon, I had the one male and 2 original females with 5 or 6 new breeding females (the offspring of the original trio), along with dozens of juveniles of varying age.

About a year and a half into this, it struck me as odd that I still had just the one male but now about 10 breeding females. Upon closer observation I figured out why - the big daddy (ha!) was removing potential competition before they got big enough to challenge him. Most of the young males he killed were small enough that I would never find them, but occasionally a small one would turn up stuck to the filter intake, etc.

Well, once I figured out what was going on, I moved a group of about a dozen pretty small fry (1/4 - 1/2") to another tank to grow out. My hope was to get at least 1 or 2 males growing to eventually replace the original one. Finally, about 7 months ago, Mr. Big Daddy died - old age, I guess (or all the ladies were finally too much for him to handle :lol:). I had lost a few of the ones I had separated and the remainder all appeared to be females. After the past 7 months of no new babies, I was beginning to suspect that I had waited too long and he had killed all the male fry before he died.

So now you know why I'm so excited to finally see a batch of tiny new multi fry coming out of their shell to feed. I expect there to be a new population boom in the multi tank over the next couple of months - especially if this young male is even half as prolific as his daddy was. He's still young enough that I can't pick him out from the females, though, so let's hope he takes care of himself long enough to give me a few more males!

Rambling and riveting, I know. Thanks for humoring me, though. Any comments or similar experiences are welcomed!
 
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