Nicaraguensis Cichlid

[Herc]

I purchased a pair of Hypsophrys nicaraguensis about a month ago, maybe longer. The two are inseperable and always swimming side by side and digging together.

A few weeks back I decided to move the couple to a larger tank hoping that they would breed once they have settled in and dug there pits..

Well once I had moved them and was about to empty there previous tank I noticed hundreds of eggs burried in the gravel. :oops: I placed the female back but started to eat some eggs as she would have gotten spooked so I returned her to the larger tank.

Instead of waiting weeks or months for them to lay eggs again I decided to try and save some eggs and try raise them myself. After about 5 days more or less, the eggs became wrigglers. They are now free swimming for just over a week and developing well.

In my opinion they are beautiful fish and havent come accross many for sale. Here are some pics I took recently..

Comments welcome.

-Tom

[Billaney]

Awesome looking fish your right ! good luck raising the fry , How big do the parents get ?

[Alan]

Awesome pic there Herc.

Congrats on breeding them.

Remember to not feed, or attemt to feed them, till they are free swimming,

which will be about 4 or 5 days from the hatching date, then they'll take newlly hatched BBS.

You picture of the pair clearly shows the difference between them.

The MALE has the spangles on the dorsal, caudal and anal fins,

while the FEMALE doesn't.

Now all you have to do is raise them.

Good luck

Alan 104

[alanmin4304]

It is a lot of fun watching cichlids raise their young (or eat them) but to be a serious producer of fish I think you need to seperete them from the eggs. good luck.

[monaro1]

well done

nice looking fish,

[Herc]

Thanx Billaney, from what I've read the adults get up to 16.5 cm and are resonalby peacefull for cichlids. From my observation they are strictly bottom dwellers and love to move the tanks substrate around when breeding.

Gidday Alan, the picture of the fry was about 2 days after they hatched. once the egg yolk transformed into a stomach and they were free swimming I started feeding them. I also read up in another post that you recomended putting a snail in with the fry to clean up the scraps, I threw in a rams horn snail and hes keeping it pretty clean, Thanks

Hey alanmin4304, the only cichlids I have succesfully raised without there parents were Convicts. I guess that they gave me some experience before trying other species. It's great watching them grow from eggs to fish, definatly my favorite part of fish keeping

Thanx Monaro1

I also have a question About Green Severums.. can green severums carry the Gold severum gene like convicts carry a gold? and produce a % of gold as well as green?

Thanks,

-Tom

[monaro1]

i dont know about carrying the gene but my green and gold are trying to breed all the time, i am thinking of setting up a tank for them over christmas and see what comes out of it

[malawi_man]

soooooooooo......... when are you selling them lol