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Red jewel cichlids breeding


firestorm
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Ok so about a week and a half ago, I saw my red jewel cichlids clearing rocks and defending an area near the bottom of the tank. The female looked pretty fat, so then I knew she had to be doing something soon. So about a few hours later I looked and the female was laying eggs while the male fertilized them. What an experience, it was very neat to see it. I went back to work and came home about 5:15 to see our male auratus chasing them away (this never happens) while one of his females was eating the eggs. So what I did was grab a clean fish bucket, fill it with tank water, and got a net. Using the net I scooped up the eggs and some of the gravel, and carefully placed them in the bucket. Now I just left it there with a sponge filter and heater hooked up. Since this was my first experience trying to raise eggs myself, I did not know that you need to keep a current on it to imitate the fish fanning the eggs. So I took the sponge filter out and put an airstone right above them. Within a day or so, I noticed alot of the eggs were white, I tried to clean most of them out as possible. I figured that probably all of the eggs would go bad. But a couple days later when I was going to dump the bucket, I saw little swimmers in there. So I have kept them feeding them bbs and crushed up flakes, doing a water change every other day. I have been able to count around 30, but there are probably more. I just cannot believe the eggs managed to hatch. I am guessing they hatched about sunday. With looking at all the eggs, they had probably laid about 100. This was their first batch, and I didn't even know we had one male and one female lol, guess we got lucky. Here is a picture, the best I can get of the babies, and I will post some pictures soon of their mom and dad.

DSC01435.jpg

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Ok so about a week and a half ago, I saw my red jewel cichlids clearing rocks and defending an area near the bottom of the tank. The female looked pretty fat, so then I knew she had to be doing something soon. So about a few hours later I looked and the female was laying eggs while the male fertilized them. What an experience, it was very neat to see it. I went back to work and came home about 5:15 to see our male auratus chasing them away (this never happens) while one of his females was eating the eggs. So what I did was grab a clean fish bucket, fill it with tank water, and got a net. Using the net I scooped up the eggs and some of the gravel, and carefully placed them in the bucket. Now I just left it there with a sponge filter and heater hooked up. Since this was my first experience trying to raise eggs myself, I did not know that you need to keep a current on it to imitate the fish fanning the eggs. So I took the sponge filter out and put an airstone right above them. Within a day or so, I noticed alot of the eggs were white, I tried to clean most of them out as possible. I figured that probably all of the eggs would go bad. But a couple days later when I was going to dump the bucket, I saw little swimmers in there. So I have kept them feeding them bbs and crushed up flakes, doing a water change every other day. I have been able to count around 30, but there are probably more. I just cannot believe the eggs managed to hatch. I am guessing they hatched about sunday. With looking at all the eggs, they had probably laid about 100. This was their first batch, and I didn't even know we had one male and one female lol, guess we got lucky. Here is a picture, the best I can get of the babies, and I will post some pictures soon of their mom and dad.

DSC01435.jpg

That is an awesome story!! I am supposed to have a Male and Female (That is what I bought) and had no luck with mating them. I wish you the best of luck with them. If you ever find you would like to get rid of a few please let me know as I would be interested in getting some. The Red Jewels are awesome fish and congrats to you!!!

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I was looking today and we must have at least 50 fry, they must have had a pretty big batch for their first time. I still cannot believe they were able to survive and hatch, especially this many. I have the sponge filter going on it now, and I try to feed them at least 4 times a day. Here is a picture from earlier today, I unplugged the airstone and most of them came to the top in a group. And yes I would love to save some for you. When they are decent size I will most likely be selling them for about $0.25 each. I don't care about getting a large profit, just a little to cover some of the costs for raising them. I am thinking in about a month they will be ready, but who knows how fast they will grow. I will probably be posting in the sell section and I will also PM you and let you know. But for now I will keep you updated.

DSC01444.jpg

Oh and don't worry, ours took about 6 months before they mated, that is about how long we have had them for. Pics of parents coming up soon.

Edited by firestorm
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Ok, i've edited the pic I have on mommy. Our male looks very similar, but a little larger and deeper red than her. Mommy is about 3.5" long and daddy is about 4.5". I noticed that dad has more blue speckles in his black circle on the side of his body than mom. Enjoy!!! Lol unless it is the other way around, but either way one is definitely male and 1 is female.

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Here is some info I got from aqualandpetsplus.com Hope this will help you in trying to breed yours. And I guess they are hard to sex so who knows, you may just have a couple of one sex. I think we got very lucky and it was a total fluke. They were the only 2 we bought and made sure to pick the brightest red ones in the store tank.

Conditioning. Give your jewels a variety of foods to plump them up. “Ve vant to plump zem up!” Flakes and pellets first, then give them the right size frozen foods. Small earthworms contain secret secretions that puts a surge in their urge to merge. Ditto on mealworms snipped in half. You’ll see a change in color, belly size, and aggression level. If you see their breeding tubes appear, get ready to pass out cigars. Chances are, you’ll miss the whole process and find them protecting a patch of wigglers by the time you know what’s happening.

Edited by firestorm
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Great story. Its pretty much the same with me. I bought two red jewels and they happened to be male and female and then they mated. I think I've gone through about 5 spawns now. It seems they always seem to get in the mood right after I do a water change.

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Great story. Its pretty much the same with me. I bought two red jewels and they happened to be male and female and then they mated. I think I've gone through about 5 spawns now. It seems they always seem to get in the mood right after I do a water change.

Lol, yeah for some reason fish just love those water changes. Most will spawn after doing one. I know that is one trick also to help your fish to spawn. How big are your jewels ray?

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Ok, i've edited the pic I have on mommy. Our male looks very similar, but a little larger and deeper red than her. Mommy is about 3.5" long and daddy is about 4.5". I noticed that dad has more blue speckles in his black circle on the side of his body than mom. Enjoy!!! Lol unless it is the other way around, but either way one is definitely male and 1 is female.

DSC01309.jpg

Here is some info I got from aqualandpetsplus.com Hope this will help you in trying to breed yours. And I guess they are hard to sex so who knows, you may just have a couple of one sex. I think we got very lucky and it was a total fluke. They were the only 2 we bought and made sure to pick the brightest red ones in the store tank.

Conditioning. Give your jewels a variety of foods to plump them up. “Ve vant to plump zem up!” Flakes and pellets first, then give them the right size frozen foods. Small earthworms contain secret secretions that puts a surge in their urge to merge. Ditto on mealworms snipped in half. You’ll see a change in color, belly size, and aggression level. If you see their breeding tubes appear, get ready to pass out cigars. Chances are, you’ll miss the whole process and find them protecting a patch of wigglers by the time you know what’s happening.

Both of my Jewels are alot darker Red than the one you have pictured.I wish I had a camera to take a picture of them... I am thinking I have 2 males...The saleman who sold me them told me it was a male and female!! I am starting to wonder???? The one is bigger than the other but besides that they look the same. My fingers are crossed!!!

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I find it hard to ever see really nice jewels who are a really dark red, and to me they are more beautiful the darker they are. You must have 2 very nice jewels. If you get some of my fry you can do what is suggested and get a small group of them, and see which ones pair off. Apparently most people don't know what sexes their jewels are until you see them laying eggs, or until after the eggs have already hatched and are little wigglers. Have you tried looking at the store you got them from to see if they have anymore like yours? If they do you can also try buying a couple more and see what happens.

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Great story. Its pretty much the same with me. I bought two red jewels and they happened to be male and female and then they mated. I think I've gone through about 5 spawns now. It seems they always seem to get in the mood right after I do a water change.

Lol, yeah for some reason fish just love those water changes. Most will spawn after doing one. I know that is one trick also to help your fish to spawn. How big are your jewels ray?

My female is about 3.5 inches and my male is about 4 inches.

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So they are similar in size, and you have already had that many spawns? Wow, how long did you have them before they decided to do the little deed?

I think I saw the first one probably about 6 months ago. I bought them probably last April or May.

I now have another batch of fry.

Raymond

Edited by rayfong
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So then it seems it took your guys a while to spawn too. I guess once they do it for the first time, they start to do it on a regular basis. I will probably take more pictures in a few days to show the progress in growth. Still feeding them Baby brine shrimp and crushed flakes 4 times a day. They seem to be much more active in the last couple of days, and they all seem to swim as a school. I hope to have at least 25 of them that will survive until they are a good size. So how often do yours spawn? sounds like almost once a month. The fry is about 5 or 6 days old now.

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We went through quite a few spawns with our Red Jewels when we had the 150 gallon up and running. Those two would take over at least half of the tank and have babies and G*D HELP whatever other fish got anywhere near them. I had them in with African lake cichlids and the Jewels were by far the most aggressive when they had babies. We moved them to a 33 gallon but they would not breed in there, so we moved them back to the 150, and they immediately began breeding again.

We found that the best way to save the most fry was when they were hatched and still hanging out in a kind of ball formation, we would siphon them into a doubled up breeder net. We doubled the net because the other fish could suck the babies right through a single net. Keep in mind there may be some major size differences amongst the fry and the bigger ones have no problem chowing down on their smaller brothers and sisters.

Anyway we had so many spawns that several local fish stores that we deal with refused to take any more of the babies. Tank crashed soon after that so that was the end of our freshwater.

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Sorry to hear about your tank. Yeah I was very surprised that the jewels didn't stick up for their eggs against the auratus as much. I hate when people tell you they can't be in a tank of more aggressive fish, since they can be extremely aggressive when spawning themselves. We had them in our 90 gallon with many other aggressive fish and they survived just fine. We removed them for now and they are in our 25 gallon. But we will probably be moving them back in when we get another tank to house some of the others we currently have in there. We are having the same problem with our convicts....no one wants the babies, so we may have to resort to feeding them to our oscars.

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