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orange chromides


Benny

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I have not had any personal experience breeding these fish but can tell you they are hard to sex. The female is more cloudily coloured and doesn't have any red in the edges of the fins (according to a book I looked up).

The breeding water should be 26 - 28C, pH 7.5, dCH 2 deg, dGH 10 - 15 degs. Add 1 teaspoon salt or seasalt for every 10 litres of water. Fry will die if the chemical composition is not right.

Fish spawn on uncovered stones, level or upright surfaces. Female lays 200 to 300 eggs, one beside the other.

Eggs have a short stalk and incubation is 4 days.

On hatching the fry are transferred to pits excavated in the bottom of the substrate.

Both parents care for the eggs and later the fry with the male chiefly guarding territory.

Fry are typically yellow black.

Occasionally they feed on mucous produced by the parents.

For the first 14 days, filter water through active charcoal and check pH. Then replace quarter of the water with fresh water, and later a third to a half.

These fish are sensitive to chemicals.

Hope this is of help to you. Good luck :D

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Benny,

Paul Parsons spawned the true Orange Chromide (Etroplus maculatus)

several (ie more than 10, perhaps closer to 15) years ago. Try

contacting him perhaps ( http://paul.aaquaria.com/Enter.html or

nzpaul15@hotmail.com ).

Mostly what we see in the shops these days are the gold form of this

species (IMHO) unfortunately.

See: http://www.aquahobby.com/orange.html for some info on breeding.

I did see some 'Green' chromides (E. suratensis - being sold as 'pearl

spotted chromides or some such name) at Wet Pets over the weekend. You don't see them very often.

Andrew.

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  • 3 weeks later...

my chromides have just layed eggs on a rock and are guarding them! what amazing luck i had, that I got a male and a female. they have been guarding the rock against intruders for about 2 days now and appear to have dug a pit near the rock.

for those that want to know my pH is 7.2 and I have 1tsp of salt per 10 litres, suprisingly the other fish seem to like it.

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Benny said...

> my chromides have just layed eggs on a rock and are

> guarding them! what amazing luck i had, that I got a male

> and a female.

Well, until you see actual fry you only know that you've got at

least one female. Sometimes cichlid females will 'pair off' if there

is no male present and go through the motions of laying eggs and

guarding them. Of course, if there is no male then the eggs wont

be fertile...

> for those that want to know my pH is 7.2 and I have 1tsp of

> salt per 10 litres, suprisingly the other fish seem to like it.

The pH sounds good for chromides and I bet they'd tolerate a

lot more salt without too many problems. This may not apply

to other fish and plants though...

Good luck.

Andrew.

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Benny said...

> are cichlids good parents?

Many cichlids, chromides included, can make very good parents.

Ultimately though it's likely the fry will get eaten by other fish

in the tank or by the parents themselves if they decide to spawn

again.

IMHO, it's always best to breed fish in their own tank rather than

in a community set-up.

If it were me, I'd set the adults up in a 2ft tank with water conditions

similar to the original tank. Move the adults into this new tank, feed

well (deally live foods) and maintain the best water quality you can.

The adults will most likely spawn again within a few weeks if all goes

well. Then you can let the parents care for the fry if you want to take

the risk or else move the adults back to the main tank and raise the

fry seperately. It depends on how many fish you want to raise I

guess...

Andrew.

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regardless of what I do it is still quite entertaining to see what the male(I think) does to protect the eggs. he has already had a fight with my tough siamese tiger and he didnt come out on the worse end. Infact he took a few scales off the siamese tiger.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi there, I bred these beauties in 2001, contrary to other comments they don't need salt in the water but it may help. I used only live food, daphnia, whiteworms, brineshrimp etc to condition them. Mine always laid eggs in a teracotta flowerpot upsidedown, they were secretive but good parents. I used to get upwards of 50 fry surviving each batch. Raised on brine shrimp solely. Mine were the true green form not colour morph(not E.suratensis) as a matter of interest came from Pets Palace,Nelson. Flew them on a plane to hamilton no problems.

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they thought it was live food, if you've used live food recently they may have mistaken eggs for FOOD. My Miccrogeophagus ramirezi(Butterfly Dwarf Cichlid) use to do this all the time. Be patient sometimes 4-5 spawnings before a successful hatching. are you sure they haven't sucked out the fry and moves them to a pit somewhere, alot of dwarf cichlids do this.

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