mating pair of Jewels Maybe???

twood63 · 08-18-2007, 08:35 PM

I have what I think is a mating pair of Jewels still young laying eggs but nothing in hatching. I had to separate from the 55 of other africans because they were killing them off 1 by 1.

I put them in a bare 20 high tank with just some rock and nothing happened. I added sand and live plants and they have layed twice more with no fry yet .

Does anyone know whats going on with them. Do I need to put more fish in with them?

Thanks

T

:confused :

pappyy3 · 08-19-2007, 09:38 AM

Hi. Are you sure you have a pair??

There could be a number of reasons why this is happening:

1. Sometimes two females may bond just like a pair, produce eggs, but they will not hatch as they are not fertile.

2. If your fish are a pair (ie: 1 male and 1 female) one of the fish may be infertile.

3. How old are your fish?. Sometimes young fish get it wrong the first few times they spawn, but will succeed after a number of attempts.

4. What are your water parameters? Water PH at the incorrect levels can sometimes affect the hatching rates of eggs.

twood63 · 08-19-2007, 11:22 AM

I just checked my PH and we are at around 7.2 to 7.4. I'm hoping for 2 of what you they are still to small and or they are both female. I have 1 more in my Malawi tank I'll add to the tank to see what happens. Thanks for your help.

T

number1PArealtor · 08-21-2007, 11:16 PM

Please don't take what I say to heart too much, I don't have any first hand experience with this and I'm not very familiar with cichlids but I wanted to give you some feedback because my cousin has a pair of jewel cichlids that just had fry. He has had them together for about a year now and to the best of his knowledge this is only the second, maybe third time they have had eggs and this is the first time they have hatched. He has always had the jewels with other cichlids and never bothered to seperate them until the eggs actually hatched and even then he let the other fish remain in the tank for about a day. Cichlids are good parents and will chase off and possibly kill other cichlids that are even twice their size. They also pick the fry up in their mouth and spit them back out where they want them when they think the fry are moving too far away from their little familly cluster. I believe at some point the parents should be seperated from the fry but I don't know when. In my opinion, I wouldn't be too concerned that they aren't breeding yet, like I said-it took my cousin a year! You may be able to get them to breed faster though or maybe it's a waiting game.? Hope you got something out of this and good luck!

twood63 · 08-22-2007, 01:47 AM

I was hoping for an answer like that. I was beginning to wonder if it was the parameters of my water. It has been a lot of years since I worried about breeding fish. Until last year it had been 7 years since. I had a breeding pair of severums. and some tanks I had put together in my basement with mollies, platys and tetras That had started breeding. I was trading them at fish auctions and the LFS at the time. Then across the board they all died. I believe the local water shed in the area had some toxins which caused the local water company to add more chlorines and flourines to kill off the bacteria.
Now that I'm back into the hobby I'm gun shy.

Thanks again for the information.

T