Pictures of Red Chromide Parents

[omplmpa3]

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[L!$A]

Wow omplmpa3!
It looks very nice! That is a really creative set-up
I like all the mini pots, it looks really good!

Just a question before you put the terracotta pots into the water, what steps do you have to take to sanitize them? If any?

[RTR]

One of my favorite Cichlids, good work!

Re: the egg/fry loss - did you provide a night light or LED moonlight to give the parents some night vision? In tanks with shrimp or any other potential egg predator,it ca be a plus. No direct light on the spawn site of course,just a bit of illumination so they can guard a bit during the dark cycle. You might try it with a future spawning.

The Chromides are the only other Cichlid I know to feed the fry at least in part on body slime, so if the parents start looking more slimy than normal, it is fairly common. These fry do not depend on slime coat feeding as much as do parent-reaed Discus, but it is an addition to their diet.. Watch for it- it is cool.

[omplmpa3]

Wow omplmpa3!
It looks very nice! That is a really creative set-up
I like all the mini pots, it looks really good!

Just a question before you put the terracotta pots into the water, what steps do you have to take to sanitize them? If any?

Thank you! It's a bit orange but the fish really enjoy them. I just rinse the pots off before I put them in the tank, to remove any dirt or dust. Terracotta is inert so it needs no special treatment before it's put in a tank. I often break larger pots to make caves and arches and I smooth any sharp edges down with a file before I add them to the tank.

[Lil' Swimz$]

Wow omplmpa3! Its beautiful! I'm jealous. What did you use to smooth the edges? And did you break holes in the pots or was it like that? Are those live plants?

[omplmpa3]

One of my favorite Cichlids, good work!

Re: the egg/fry loss - did you provide a night light or LED moonlight to give the parents some night vision? In tanks with shrimp or any other potential egg predator,it ca be a plus. No direct light on the spawn site of course,just a bit of illumination so they can guard a bit during the dark cycle. You might try it with a future spawning.

The Chromides are the only other Cichlid I know to feed the fry at least in part on body slime, so if the parents start looking more slimy than normal, it is fairly common. These fry do not depend on slime coat feeding as much as do parent-reaed Discus, but it is an addition to their diet.. Watch for it- it is cool.

I think that the Chromides are pretty much the complete package when it comes to small fish. Attractive, intelligent, entertaining and they display fascinating brood care.

Thank you for the advice on the lighting, it didn't even occur to me. I will pick up a moonlight today, I already have a LED hub. I suspect the shrimp to be the main culprits, one in particular is quite large and has a voracious appetite. I had remembered reading somewhere that the fry will attach themselves to the parents flanks and take nourishment from the slime coat, I am very excited to see it. That must happen after the fry become free swimming? Once they start feeding off the parent's slime coat would that be a good time for me to start adding food for them as well? I'm pretty sure I was able to make out eyes today and another black speck that could be the abdomen. They are also moving a lot more. At first they just kind of vibrated in the pit, now they are more or less bouncing in the pit.

The tank population in general has proven to be a quite fertile one. I have two celebes fry (they grow so slow!!!) that I am raising in a freshwater tank with nano fish until they are large enough not to be eaten by the knight gobies. I actually discovered the celebes fry in my Figure 8's tank, the eggs must have been attached to some plants I had added from the community tank. I also have a male bumblebee whose lair is a hollowed out piece of driftwood shaped like a waffle
cone. The only time he is ever out in public is when he is out to find a female, the rest of the time he is in his lair fanning eggs. With four females and only one other male for competition, he stays quite busy. I have found the incubation time for the bumblebee's eggs to be closer to 6-7 days, not 3-4 days as I have read in so many articles.

One final thing on the Chromides, there are six total and none of them are the same color. Their body color's range from a pale yellow to almost a tangerine orange. I had a single chromide for a long time and finally found the other five about four months ago. When I bought them, they were all pretty much the same color, but now they are all different. Any Thoughts?

[omplmpa3]

Wow omplmpa3! Its beautiful! I'm jealous. What did you use to smooth the edges? And did you break holes in the pots or was it like that? Are those live plants?

Thanks Lil' Swimz$! The big pot is called a strawberry jar and it's made with all the holes in it. When I do put whole pots in a tank I'll use a metal file to make the drainage hole in the bottom of the pots bigger so the fish can swim all the way through. You can use a metal file or even heavy grit sandpaper to smooth sharp edges. It can be dusty so safety glasses and mask to cover you nose and mouth are a good idea, along with gloves to avoid being cut by a sharp edge. The plants are live.There is anacharis and frill floating and some swords and vals planted in the sand. I'm not sure on the exact species of val, but the leaves are very rigid and they hardly sway in the current. I find this species of val does the best in hard and brackish water.

[RTR]

Once the fry are free-swimming - not just bouncing around in the pit while they absorb the yolk sac - they can take food by mouth. The slime from the parents is just a bridge measure to make up for the lack of tiny edibles in their natural environment, it isn't a primary diet as it is for Discus fry in the wild. So once thy can swim, start feeding.

I use dim night light lights for any substrate spawners if there is any chance of shrimp or snails lurking in the tank. That is the case for many of my setups. For me it does make a big difference in survival to free-swimming.

The Orange Chromides are a sport from the wild type. The color ha never been particularly stable, as most breeders used to be hobbyists, and hobbyists have a hard time culling fry for color - we tend to be a soft-hearted lot. If they are being commercially bred by the fish farms these days, they tend to want to sell all possible fish, so rarely cull either. Only the bred-specific breeders seem to be careful about culling out less desirable shades. But part of the color is dependent on feeding (carotenes, etc.) and part on the hierarchy - place in the pecking order does affect color in many to most Cichlids. The dominant fish tend to have the brightest and clearest color - which is in part hormonal, but they have to have the genes and diet for good color to be able to show it. The near tangerine orange is the ideal color for these sports - they almost glow..

I have worked mostly with these sports, but if I ever do them again, I think it will with the wild type fish. They are not as showy, but are also really pretty and well-marked.

HTH

[Pufferpunk]

How do you sex them?

[omplmpa3]

Thank you for so might insightful information RTR! I was guessing that hierarchy may having something to do with their change in coloration but I didn't know if that would be an outlandish assumption. The only other cichlid I have had was an angelfish, so I'm not too familiar with their characteristics.

As far as my chromides; there are three adults and three juveniles. One of the parents and one juvenile are near tangerine in color, though the tangerine color isn't quite evident in pictures. The other two adults are a deep yellow, while the two remaining juvenile are a paler shade of yellow.

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Soft hearted indeed! When I first set up my brackish community tank I decided to breed platies and use the fry as a food source for the gobies. But I couldn't go through with it. I then had to save as many as I could. I would keep the fry in a floating nursery until they were large enough to go into my nano fish tank and continue growing. I few generations later I couldn't take it anymore. My platies were poop machines and food hogs. I brought them to my LFS owner, who was thrilled with their colors, and traded them for a bunch of plants and two juvenile Knight gobies. But now I have two pregnant mollies, one black and one white, with a chocolate molly as the father. So I have to see what the fry will look like!

[RTR]

If you are lucky, the males will show a red edge to the caudal and dorsal fins - maybe. Like the other pair-bonding substrate-spawning Cichlids, the best way to get pairs is to get at least 6 fry and rear them together. They can tell the difference, even if we cannot, and are more likely to pick a compatible mate - very important here as both parents do egg- and fry-tending. The brightest, clearest colored fish from the group is likely the dominant male. After he selects his mate, the others may provide another pair if a divider is used to segregate the first mated pair. Do this only in long tanks, obviously.

IME,the best breeding setups are two or three tanks end-to end, keeping the abutting end glasses clean. Males can work off any territoriality on the untouchables in the next tank, and the mates tend to work together very smoothly.

This tank, in this thread with aliens in the same tank, serves the same function, with a bit more risk to eggs and fry.

HTH

[Pufferpunk]

Aliens?

[RTR]

Aliens: non-conspecific fish and inverts. In other words, anything alive larger than plankton other than a breeding pair and/or possible dither fish.

HTH

[omplmpa3]

It appears that four or five fry remain, they are near swimming. Both parents are getting some black speckles on their flanks and and one is developing a black edging on the anal fins.

Question; why would/could dither fish be considered non-alien?

[Lil' Swimz$]

You've got flounder in there! That's so cool! This is FW, right? I had no idea there were FW flounder!