General African Cichlid Discussion • Red Jewel Cichlids Fry

[jayson6464]

I posted this last week on Aquariacentral.com Last week my red jewels spawned in my tank. This is the second try. The first did not end with live fry. But this time it has. When should I try to feed the fry? Right now I don't thing the egg sack is completely gone cause they appear to be wiggling still and not yet free swimmeres. And what is the grow rate like?

So Now I got a tank divider to separate the new found family from the other tank mates for now. I try to feed the "jewell Side" brine shimp but the parents eat most of it and just do thing the fry are big enough to eat. they a tiny at the pont. Free swim but more like a swarm; if that makes sense, most of time ride currents in the tank. I have so many questions. Should i leave the parent closed in with the fry? If so for how long? What is the rate of grow I can expect?



I was cause off with these little guys but I would like to give them a fighting chance.

[Dawg2012]

I'm not familiar with this exact species - so I may be corrected - but we remove the mother as soon as we can catch her without either 1) spooking the fry back into her mouth or 2) disrupting her to the point the fry are in danger. Sometimes it takes a couple of days and we've not lost any fry - but at some point she will eat them.

As for feeding the fry, we do crushed flakes within the first day or two of spitting. If yours still have yolk though I think that should suffice until it's gone.

[jayson6464]

Red Jewels are substrate spawner, so she never carried in her mouth, the eggs hatch from a pit, the male made in the sand. Currently the Parents are co-parenting the fry together, at this point...

[Dawg2012]

Ah okay. Unfortunately I can't edit my previous post so's not to proliferate the fact I spoke out my... hind orafice lol.

Good luck with them

[jayson6464]

np dawg lol.... I'm looking for all the help I can get, as I am pretty new to this.

[cichbilly]

i would move the M and F away from fry as soon as they are free swimmers... the M and F will destroy their own babies as soon as they are not babies anymore.

[jayson6464]

i really need to get my Red Jewels their own tank. So I clean the tank today after moving the fry to a 10g. It was my hospital tank.(Should have move them sooner I ended up with just 7 Fry from at least 50. Now here is the kicker. After I took the fry out the Dad started to attack the Mom and hang out with the other Jewel cichlid that I thought was a male. Well now I have new eggs spawned by this lone jewel cichlid and the original dad. Can Red Jewels change sex? Or was it a sub-female all along? I mean this fish has taken on some serious color changes since i had the trio. I thought it was just trying to mimic every color the other two made.

Can i take the rock out of the tank and move it to another tank before they hatch or before the parents move the eggs this time?

[cichlid-gal]

I currently have a pair of breeding jewel cichlids. I had originally had three jewels in this same tank but at the first lay the third jewel was almost killed so I had removed that fish to another tank only to see the parents eat the eggs. My pair has bred repeatedly and laid eggs over the last three months almost like clockwork every two weeks. None of these eggs have ever made it hatching stage as the parents have eaten them before they got there. I have done a lot of reading about this species trying to figure out what is going on with them but realized after all the info I read that I was OK with not having babies quite so often anyway

Some of the readings I found indicate that jewels form monogamous pairs for the most part so your males behavior with the other female is not typical. Also, most readings indicate that the pair will take care of their fry until the fry are free swimming and about half inch long but if you are interested in raising the fry up you may want to remove them from the parents earlier to eliminate the chance of them eating them.

Given the fact that these fish can spawn as often as every two weeks you will have another opportunity very shortly to try again with your pair(s). Good luck and enjoy