We’ve had wonderful news this evening! We have new bouncing baby fishes! In fact we have two different broods, one of Rusty Cichlids (Iodotropheus sprengerae, Lavender mBuna) and a Red-Empress Hap (Protomelas taeniolatus) brood.

A few weeks ago we noticed one our rusty cichlids was holding eggs. They are mouth brooders, so after a pair spawns, the female collects the fertilized eggs and holds them in her mouth for several weeks. For this entire time, the female will not eat. The rusty cichlids are particularly important for a couple of reasons. They are a threatened species in the wild and we got them intentionally with the idea of breeding them. We started with 1 male (let him get old enough to really be a male) and then slowly added other rusty cichlids from different sources. He’s the biggest by far and as such is the only one that gets to breed. While we’ve been told he is F1 (first generation captive breed, meaning his parents are wild), there’s no real way to verify that statement and I don’t trust everyone anyways. Such as it is, we got him and subsequently several more in a way to make certain we had fish that while all the same species are not related.

And so we found one of the little females holding a few weeks ago. We waited a few days to do anything just to see if she would swallow the eggs (hey sometimes it takes practice. You try not eating for a month). During that time we noticed that a female red empress hap in the tank was also holding (and her male was being very ornery). We decided to move both females to a small breeding tank. For the past 3 weeks they’ve been holding the eggs, coming out to see us, but refusing any food. However, this evening Kerri found the Rusty had released her fry! We removed her, feed her in isolation for a bit and then returned her to her normal tank. At the same time we decided to got ahead and nab the other female to see if we could strip the eggs from her. To my surprise she then also released free swimming fry.

At this point both females are recovering and we’ve got around 35 fry in the breeding tank.




These are surprisingly difficult to photograph. The picture above shows mostly red-empress fry. Since they are younger, the yolk sac is still visible and large on some of them. They look as thought they’ve got giant bellies. There’s maybe one rusty in that picture too.




Here there is more variety (more Rusties), but it’s not quite as focused. Anyhow, the little Rusty cichlids look just like miniature adults. They’re already fully orange brown and are quite active. Kerri even saw a couple of them facing off and locking jaws. We’ll be starting them on a diet of tiny brine shrimp and crushed flakes soon. Hopefully the two sets of fry can be raised together (similar conditions, diet, etc).

For some reason the little fish seem to like one corner in particular of the tank despite there being several rocks and some fake plants in the tank.

We’ll try our best to raise both broods and then bring them to a couple of the local fish shops. Again, while it’s nice that the Red-Empress spawned, we’re most excited about the Rusty cichlids. Aside from being just a beautiful fish (and relatively mild tempered for an African cichlid), they are threatened in the wild. They are only found in very limited areas in Lake Malawi. As such, we’ve very happy to have a diverse breeding colony of them.