[takasumi]

Hello to all. I have a wonderful mated pair of red jewels.
They bred.
The eggs hatched.
The parents moved the fry to an indescriminant area of the tank.(I didn't realize that any babies were left until this afternoon.)

My question is: NOW WHAT?

I've never raised cichlid babies before.
I don't know when you remove the parents from the fry? If I should divide the tank?
If it's normal for the babies to hide in the substrate? (It's rock, by the way.)

Any advice is welcome. I would really like to keep as many of the fry alive as I possibly can.

The parents are my favorite cichlids. (beside my Julio. Marl, of course!)

Oh yes. The babies are almost a week old. (they hatched on sunday morning at 1:25AM 5/25/08)

 

[cosmic665]

Congrats on your spawn!

It is entirely up to you where you want to go from here. If you plan on keeping all the fry alive you will probably want to move them to another tank. My experience with Jewel cichlids is as follows:

I found a pair of jewels at the LFS and placed them in a 15gallon hex. They spawned, the mother died and I ended up removing all the fish from the tank (except for the fry). At first I fed them baby brine shrimp (frozen and live) and ultimately fine flake food. 6 of the fry survived the 12-20 fry which hatched. After a 6-8 month period a pair formed out of the 6! Lucky me If you plan on keeping the fish I highly recommend you place the fry in a tank by themselves. Once the fry reach a 1/2inch the parents might start to eat them. Take a look at the following link on what to feed your fry:

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/fry_food.php

Jewels cichlid fry are as easy and hardy to care for as convicts. Remember that somewhat filthy water contains infusoria which is really the main food that the fry will eat for the first week or so. I usually seaporate the fry from the parents after 2-3weeks and place them in their own seaporate tank when breeding convicts and jewels. I tried to use a fish breeder net one time an all the fry dissapeared. So I usually devote a 15-20gallon *established* tank for raising fry.

 

[takasumi]

Thanks for the info Cosmic!

The babies are doing well and it's been 8 days since they hatched. All 200 or so are stil alive and swimmin' in my 30 gallon.

The water should be pretty yucky seeing as how I haven't done a water change in about a week and a half and before that....who can remember? (I've been absorbed with discus lately!) I can see food particle build-up in the gravel. Maybe they're eating that and this is why so many have survived. FOR NOW!!!! HA HAHAHA!

My Bumblebee is looking hungrier and hungrier every day! (I promise that I won't feed Mr. Bee the babies. (I'm looking to sell these mothers for some discus credit! :drooling: hahahaha! But not until I grow them into 2" beauties. More cash for that!)

Anyway! This will alleviate some downstairs fish tank stress! and add some new downstairs 10 gallon nursery stress!

Life is good!

 

[cosmic665]

Remember a 20gallon rubbermaid bin makes a nice grow-out tank for fry if cost is an issue. You can use a simple airstone type of filter in the tank and put 1/2 the filthy water from the old tank into the new tank.

 

[takasumi]

It's been almost 6 weeks for anyone who cares about my fry! I'm excited! I didn't lose any of the fry and have at least a few hundred swimming around in my 10 gallon set-up.

So.......Question now is... Who's willing to take some Blood Red Jewel cichlid babies? They're about an inch long and always hungry!
I love the babies but they have to go!
Maybe Craig's List??? HMMM????

 

[LeeA916xo]

ok my jewel just spit her fry there are a ton of babies i have never done this before not sure if i should remove the parents or not what did you do to keep the babies alive and what did you feed them im really not sure what to do