breeding cichlids?

Question

i have african cichlids some are around a inch long others about 3 inches they live nicely in a huge 125 gallon aquarium there is about 25 of them in there various ones by the way when is the size,age etc when they will start breeding and will a bumble bee breed with an acie etc or only with there own kinds

1 bumble bee
3 blue with black stripes
2 orange with black stripes
1 acie
3 yellow with horizonal black stripes
2 solid orange
2 jack dempseys
6 convicts

Answer 1

First let me say that keeping Africans and South Americans together is not a recipe for disaster. The fish do not "misread" each other's signals. Nothing is clearer to a fish than heading straight towards them with gills flared, it is a threat display and is understood by all fish.

The Dempsey and convicts will not interbreed with each other or any of the Africans. The bumblebee will not mistake an acei for another bumblebee or the other way around.

The only possibility for any hybrids is maybe the acei and the pseudotropheus zebra (solid orange). It is possible, but not likely. Hybrids are worthless and nobody will give you anything for them. If you know for a fact that you have hybrids, you should allow the other fish to eat them or you will be taking care of a bunch of fish that don't look like any of the standard species.

Buying fish from a "mixed cichlid" tank is not the right thing to do. These are typically culls (runts, deforms, hybrids) from the breeders and not developing normally.

You should always know the name of any fish you buy so you can take care of it properly. I put small stick on labels on the sides of my tanks with the latin name (species), common name, color variety and anything else that is relevant to identifying them. With 25 tanks, every little bit of info helps, believe me. Some tanks have 5-6 stickers. I even identify some of the plants I have in the tanks.

Answer 2

Convicts are super easy to breed. Just leave them and let them pair. Convicts are from Central America.

I don't know that it's a good idea for your jack dempsey to be in the same tank as the mbuna. If you haven't kept mbuna or south american cichs, i'd keep two separate tanks. the convict and jd need water parameters that are not the same as the mbuna. The mbuna need hard water and higher pH levels.

Personally i'd stay away from making more hybrids: ie mixed mbuna. I'm not sure what fishes you have just by the colors. Most likely they are already hybrids of other mbunas if you got them from an assorted tank. It really all depends on their personality too.

The main reason why i steer clear of this is because people unknowingly or knowingly breed them and sell the fry back to the store or other people without complete knowledge of their specie and just randomly picking one that looks like it. Hybridizing fish eventually leads to the loss of diversity in each individual specie of fish and maybe even to the eventual extinction of the fish.

As for the rest of the fish in your tank a good male to female ratio of 1:3 or 1:4 will help, it's easier to tell what is male and what is female if you have a pure breed/specie of a fish. For the most part mbuna are relatively easy to breed. Do partial water changes of 10% more frequently and raise the temperature a little bit to about 78 to 80 degrees.

It's always worked for my Greshakeis. I've had 3 batches of fry from them. You'll need a lot of rockwork too. This is just so that the fry will have places to hide once they get too big for their mothers to defend them.

Answer 3

Here's a site with lots of information on cichlids.

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/breeding/Cichlids_African/index.html

I used to have a 125 gallon tank too and raised a few species. Once it was going well, it leaked! It was devastating. I had three other smaller tanks, but in the end it ruined everything and I lost most of my fish.
They needed lots of rocks and places to hide when they are little.

Have fun. Keep some sealant available at all times!

I am not sure of all those fish, but Africans and South Americans will kill each other because they misread each others signals.

I think that Convicts are SA. Look on that site and:
http://fish.suite101.com/article.cfm/cichlids

Answer 4

Please give me the names of the cichlids you have and i can tell you how to breed them
they're all different
Some of them are mouth breeders and some of them are nestbreeders


EB

Edit*

If you don't mind i give you some sites on each one of them

1 bumble bee
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/breeding/Bridges_Bumblebee_Goby.html
http://www.aqua-fish.net/show.php?what=fish&cur_lang=2&id=11


3 blue with black stripes (is it one of these?)
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=760
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1385
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=678
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1790
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1204
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=2289


2 orange with black stripes (is it one of these?)
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=760
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1614

1 acie ?



3 yellow with horizonal black stripes (is ti one of these?)
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1575
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=889



2 solid orange (is it one of these?)
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=1730
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/profiles/species.php?id=798



2 jack dempseys
http://www.geocities.com/jackarthur46/BREEDING.html



6 convicts
http://www.petfishtalk.com/interviews/breeding_convicts/breeding_convicts.htm
http://www.geocities.com/dick_pahimulin/articles/a01.htm