Lake Tanganyika Species • Kitumba Spawning Log

[Charles]

these fry are well over 1" mark. They are swimming in my 75 gallon with juv. faoi, adult sandies, and a pair of zebra mloto brevis. They survive quite well. And they are fast enough to get to food. Here is a couple pictures of them.

Picture taken on Oct 07 2005



Here is the male. And the female is holding again. She is the same mother of those fry. But I am letting her hold this time.

Picture taken on Oct 13 2005

[Charles]

Nov 02 2005

More fry pictures. They are over the 1.5" mark.

This is the only picture taken with flash.


Here are some without flash.





Here is a picture of the tank... well half the tank.

[ben_cichlid]

Wow they have come a long way, great color, very nice job Charles

[Addicted_2_Africans]

Awesome!

[dauph]

Charles, if you pass near Qu

[Charles]

I can ship if you want to wait cause you have to wait for the batch in the female's mouth waiting to be taken out this weekend.

[rat375]

Thanks for the wonderful pics!

[Charles]

Nov 05 2005

My alpha female finally hold full term. This is her #8 spawn. #1-6 spawn, I let her hold and she lost all. I striped 30 eggs on #7 spawn and only 7 survive out of 30 eggs. Here is a link for the spawning log.

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/view ... hp?t=87722

And since I got some fry from her already. I decided to let her hold the #8 spawn. And this time, I found 10 fry in her mouth on actually 28 days. She spawned on Oct 09 2005, and I striped her on Nov 05 2005.

Babies in the bucket


Since they sill have a bit of egg sack left, I put them in a tumbler for a bit.
Here is a picture of them in the tumbler.

[Addicted_2_Africans]

Hey Charles, from your experiences with fronts, do you believe having a dim low light tank encourages fronts to breed more so than a heavily lit tank like mines? If so, I'll have to change some things around. :

[Charles]

From my experience...

Not feeding for a week - does not help. They will spit/swallow whenever they want. I actually see the holding female eats with her eggs. She will roll them and push them way down in the porch inside the mouth and then she will pick at the very small piece of food. In this spawn, I feed them as schedule; 5 days a week, evening time, and 2 days no food.

Crushed coral pieces - changed to crushed coral sand. I found pieces of sharp edges inside the mom's mouth with the eggs before. One less problem to deal with.

Powerhead gone - I have noticed that my alpha (every change he breed) he will pick the part with the least water movement.

I did everything and each time those females were not holding full term. So, this time, I follow what Big Jon was suggesting - to keep NO light at all. I did not turn on the aquarium light at all for the whole 28 days; with excepting of picture taking which is max 10 minutes. And it helps.

I don't know rather it is the age or the experience of motherhood or the NO light concept helps, but it did.

As of now, the smallest female is having her tube down. This will be her third time spawning in my tank. I will keep updating...

BTW, I don't use light unless friends want to see the fish.

I dont know if i answer your question, but i hope my log will help you.

[Charles]

Nov 6 2005

This entry is for the smallest female. I mention earlier that her tube was down a couple days ago. This is her third spawn. She just finished spawning with the alpha today. Her last spawning was on July 17 2005 and I striped her on the same day. So her turn around time is 112 days. I will do the same for her as for the alpha female - letting on hold and keep all the light off as much as possible. I do keep my schedule feeding (5 days a week once a day) and water changes (once a week 20-25%).

Will get a picture of her when she is settle.

[Charles]

Nov 07 2005

As expected, she lost almost all her eggs. Her mouth is just a bit bigger and only notice maybe max 4 eggs in there. This is just like her last spawn. On her last spawn, I notice her mouth was very small a few hours later so I striped 8 eggs from her. During her last spawning, I stopped counting at egg # 25 so I know she had a good amount of eggs laid... None of her eggs survive in the tumbler during her last spawn. At this moment, I would not strip her this time. See if she actually are going to hold even with a hand full of eggs.

[Big Jon]

Sounds like she is spawning by herself Charles if none of the eggs are fertile.

Jon

[Charles]

I saw the alpha doing his job with her on both times. I do however lost a good number of eggs to the fungus. But I am sturbborn about using med. in my main tank.

On the side note, she is still holding wiht a small mouth full.

[Charles]

Dec 01 2005

I have not updated for a while. Smallest female lost all her eggs. This is her third spawn since July 2004. Better luck next time.

Here is an update on the 2 batch of fry from the alpha male 9" and the largest female 6.5" in the tank
.
The 6 fry born on July 15 2005 (eggs not fry) are now pushing 2" They are pigs and not skittish at all. All 6 of them have very nice solid stripes and nice blue on them. You can look at the earlier pictures and decide for yourself.

The 10 fry born on Oct 9 2005 (eggs not fry) are now almost 1". I have a few pictures of them. All of them also have solid stripes. I so far did not see any white spots on them at all. No deforms either.

Both batches are from the same parents. First batch is stripe from day 1 and second batch is held full term.

This is the only picture with flash


These are pictures without flash