MbunaFan

What, no replies yet???? Okay, I don't have any real experience with this, but this is what I've heard (maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong)........ Unless you have an egg tumbler, you may want to wait at least till they're holding for 2-3 weeks (probably closer to three weeks). You don't have to strip them, but you may want to move the holding females into a separate tank (best done when they're sleeping to keep the stress to a minimum). You can wait till they spit on their own. On the actual stripping part, you'll have to get someone else to help. Anyways, that's my two cents worth. Hope it helps a little. Try searching the breeding section of the forum. Maybe this question has been answered there before.

an independent LFS, Petparadise in St Albert

any red empress??????

Thanx, that sure looks like him. Wish they had a picture of the female.

I bought these two as C. borleyi 'yellow fin', but can't find any information on them. Is there another name for them and is it male/female or male/subdominant male? The dominant male looks really good, and the white on the tips of his fins even seems to glow when he's showing off. The other one is smaller, kinda a silverish-blueish color.

Unfortunately, I was too late on this one :cry:

Yeah, you don't have to rub it in! Does that mean you'll keep an eye out for the Red Empress and let me know?

Unfortunately, I don't have the pleasure of living anywhere close to Gold's. I've been trying to find out when they'll get some more Red Empress' in, but just know it's supposed to be in the next few months. I'm not sure how up-to-date their website is and am worried of missing out (I don't have the cash flow at the moment to just order them). If any of you happen to wander around there and see some for sale, could you please let me know! I'd really appreciate that. thanx Marie

yeah, I looked again this morning and I'm pretty sure she's holding. Not eating and keeps hiding, but still bullies the others around, just not as much. Sure hope the other socolofi is the daddy. Could it just be that he's subdominant because she's almost an inch bigger? (She's about 3 1/2" while the other one is 2 1/2). If that's not the case, I guess the C. afra cobue might be the daddy. That wouldn't be very good. And how different would the babies look? Didn't think that they're alike enough to breed, but I guess I'll have to wait a few weeks and see what happens. Maybe she won't even hold to term. So, I guess I should wait 2-3 weeks before moving her to another tank?

Okay, now I'm confused. On the weekend, I sold a bunch of my fish, so I did a large water change and big tank clean up at the time to make it easier to catch the buggers (not that easy in a 90g even with an extra large net). (Also bought some new food). That all said and done, it seemed the fish I have left (2 P. socolofi, a pair of C. borleyi, 1M C. afra cobue and 2 BN plecos) had to put themselves into a new pecking order. The largest socolofi has always been the most aggressive fish in the tank, but seemed to go into overdrive, taking over most of the caves and keeping the rest of the fish to one half of the tank. When I was checking on the fish tonight, I couldn't find him/her at first. Apparently s/he is staying in caves/hiding spots (usually was swimming around before) now and seems to have a swollen throat. It looks like the pictures of a fish holding eggs, but I always assumed it was a male. As the other socolofi is subdominant to this one, does that mean it would be hybrids? Or did my fish just develop a mysterious illness I haven't heard about? I tried to take a picture, but no luck. Please let me know what you guys think of this.

Thanks Nick, I'll try that with the next water change. I definitely have a male and female borleyi on my hands, the male has a blue face, yellow body, white on the tip of his dorsal fin and the blue in his fins starts to "glow" when he's trying to impress his woman. Quite the sight. The female is like you said, greyish-silver with yellow fins and at least an inch smaller than her man. Maybe she's just not ready yet.

Thanks for all the replies. Yes, its' P. acei that I was talking about. Sorry. All the Male/Female behaviour described by your replies is what I was seeing, but not any more (and no holding female either). I'm pretty sure it's a male and female. The male is a bit larger (about 4") and darker in colour while the other one is about 3-3 1/2" and a lighter blue. Then I have another one that's about 3-3 1/2", also lighter in colour, but I'm guessing it's a subdominant male, just going by the behaviour with the others. The last one I'm guessing is also a male, but lowest in rank and also quite a bit smaller. Only about 2 1/2"long, but a bit darker color again. However, all the others have more say than he does. My C. borleyi are about 5" for the male, all coloured up; the female is about 3 1/2 to 4". Again, he had stopped chasing her around and was actually just swimming with her, waiting to get her attention, then "dancing" and trying to get her to follow him. But she just wasn't interested. But like you guys said, maybe it's a subdominant male that's not showing any color. Or maybe she's just not mature enough yet. I really don't know.

My dominant male Akai was "dancing" for what I'm assuming is a female Akai, but she just didn't seem interested. I thought that maybe it was do to too many distractions by the other fish, so I took my four Akai out of the 90g and into a 33g by themselves. The behaviour continued for a couple of days, but now nothing. They seem to have too much fun swimming around the rocks to be interested in each other (I do weekly water changes and have the temperature around 28C). Now I've noticed that my Borleyi has also started "dancing", yet again the female does not seem interested at all. What to do? Maybe feed them some hormones? (just kiddin) Or are male fish generally more horny than females (just like people)?

Thank you so much for the quick reply. That first site mentioned was perfect. Got it all figured out and going. Wasn't that difficult and even got the selfpriming feature to work no problem. I guess I was just worried I would break something and then not have a filter to use and all my fish die!!! Anyways, thanx again. :thumbs:

okay, so the selfpriming feature wasn't working (or I wasn't doing it correctly), but at least the filter is going again after I added some water into the "intake". Still can't get into the darn thing :mad: Has six blue horizontal latches around the top half - tried to flip them all to what I thought would be open, then to lift the top off, tried to twist the top off, nothing seems to be working. :cuss:

Selfpriming, 900L/h output. If anyone has this type of filter or is familiar with them, could you please contact me. :well: Can't figure out how to take it apart (bought it used and didn't get a manual) and also can't get it to run again (just noisy, but valves to hoses are open) :cry:

My mother has a 55g and her two big plecos which she had for years finally passed away :cry: Now she wanted to redo the tank, put lot of plants in it (fake & real) as well as other decorations and then added four angelfish. One wasn't doing so well and died within a few days (got refund from store), then two more got killed by the biggest one (zebra veil). What other fish would be hardy and get along with this bugger? :well: Please, need help ASAP

sorry, live in the Edmonton area. So, if I go to Calgary and buy fish at Gold's, how do I transport them back home (about 31/2-4h drive) without stressing them out too much?

Would love to have more, but currently just have one 90g Malawi set up as follows: 4 Yellow Labs 4 P. acei 3 P. socolofi 3 C. boreyli 2 Sunburst Peacocks 2 bristlenose plecos All (except one lab) are still juvis, but hopefully I'll have some pairs in there or at least a couple of male haps for color.

where in Alberta do you suggest to go to get good quality (not mutts) Malawian cichlids? Where does everyone else get their fish from? :well: