Electric Yellows mating?

[nickh]

I have a pair of Electric Yellows in a 50L tank (one male and one female). Lately I have noticed that the male has been chasing the female a lot more than he ever has.

Is this them mating, or getting ready to?

[ryanjury]

Males will chase females around almost constantly attempting to breed. It is usually when the female stops being chased that they actually breed, you will notice her fattening up and breeding tubes starting to drop etc when she is ready. After they have bred the male continues to keep chasing her which usually results in her spitting her fry unless the tank is big enough and there are plenty of hiding places and multiple females in the tank.

Usually people keep african cichlids in harems of 1m to 2-3+ females to lesson the stress on individual females as the males constant harassing can lead them to be harassed to death. I would be worried about this with you only have a pair, and also worried about the tank size you have them in it is pretty small.

[firenzenz]

What size are they. I've had yellows breed at 4cm.

The other thing to be weary is that naturally they would be in larger groups with Males having multiple females to mate with. in a one on one situation the male will continually harass the one female even if she isn't ready to breed. This can be a dangerous scenario for the female especially in a small tank like yours where she has no place to escape from his attention.

[firenzenz]

Ryan beat me to it

[nickh]

Thanks for the info.

Yea it is a bit of a mistake, I got some bad advice on it and I am saving for a bigger tank at the moment. Ive tried to create as many hiding places as possible for them with a lot of rocks in the tank.

Would it be possible to add 1 other female to lessen the chasing etc into the tank I have? I will be getting a much bigger one in a few months?

[firenzenz]

Yeah, that could work. Personally I'd replace male/female or both for a bunch of juvies.

Yes shame about advice. Probably would have been better to buy a group of juvies to growout in that tank so you had a nicely maturing group when you upgrade.

Not looking to 'hawk' fish but if you are interested I have good supply very clean 3-4cm juvies.

[ryanjury]

You could try and stick another female in there..

I would probably hold fire until you can afford a bigger tank or get rid of the bigger ones and add juvvies as firenz has suggested.

I have successfully kept fish that shouldn't be kept in 2ft tanks before but the rocks were stacked to the top of the tank from the front to the back. If it is only a short time till you can get a bigger tank and the female isn't getting damaged it might be ok to keep them and wait.