Recently two of my malawi females have started holding one which i'm expecting to release any day now. I've known that the males have egg spots on the fins to attract females and so on, but the two females in the holding tank have also got a small amount of egg spots aswell, which has now completely thrown me off track to what I had previously read about. Would anybody know why these two females have egg spots. BTW I am 100% sure they are holding as I've managed to catch a glimpse of the eggs in the mouth and the one that is further along the babies have hatched and can be seen swimming around in the mother mouth.

what sp. of malawis are these?? i have seen some mbuna females with eggs spots, really need to know the sp. though, probably nothing to worry about. 8)

hi james,

i have a couple of my malawi females that have egg spot also, the other thing one of them does is when she is holding she also changes colour much more towards the males colouring, this seems to stop her being bothered so much , i assume the egg spots might also ade in this.

good luck

there zebras, unfortunately when I got home home last night I checked up on the two females the one which fell pregnant first wasn't holding anymore and there were no babies in the tank that I could see. So I tried a little expiriment and put some food in there and she started eating, which made me a bit dissapointed as I came to the conclusion that she must have eaten her babies. I was wondering if this is possible seeing that I only put the second female in two days ago and thought she might have been threatened so she ate the babies, it is not possible that they are in there as the tank is quite small and would be very easy to see. the second one is still in the holding tank but even she barely looks like she is holding. I am doubtful that she ate her own babies as malawis are supposed to be very good parents, but evidence suggests that she has. Also how can I stop this from happening again as I'm sure she will fall preganant again in a few weeks?

there zebras, unfortunately when I got home home last night I checked up on the two females the one which fell pregnant first wasn't holding anymore and there were no babies in the tank that I could see. So I tried a little expiriment and put some food in there and she started eating, which made me a bit dissapointed as I came to the conclusion that she must have eaten her babies. I was wondering if this is possible seeing that I only put the second female in two days ago and thought she might have been threatened so she ate the babies, it is not possible that they are in there as the tank is quite small and would be very easy to see. the second one is still in the holding tank but even she barely looks like she is holding. I am doubtful that she ate her own babies as malawis are supposed to be very good parents, but evidence suggests that she has. Also how can I stop this from happening again as I'm sure she will fall preganant again in a few weeks?

if it was their first time i wouldn't expect them to hold full term but by the third time they should have it right, you could strip the eggs and put them in a container with and airstone with the eggs just gently rolling on the bottom to imitate the females churning motion, i successfully hatched 60 or so blue lumphead fry using this method, i also have 20 more electric yellow eggs and 30 electric yellow fry with eggs sacks in a container at the moment.