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.

It’s a rare event when any picture I take of our fish tanks comes out nicely.



Above is a little “Cobalt Zebra” or Metriaclima Callainos. This happens to be a she in our mixed Mbuna tank. Even though she is a she, notice how incredibly bright her color is. This is true for lots of cichlid species.



We also got a picture of our little Melanochromis Auratus. This is a very androgynous fish in our case. Above she looks like a she. But at times she’ll turn brown and eventually black. While black (male) “he” will behave like a male and chase. But eventually the black fades to brown and we’re back to a little she.

Today we brought home a new tropical fish, a Clown Loach that is roughly 8-9inches in length. She is the SUPER LOACH. She is the new queen of the tank. She’s also somewhat mesmerizing to watch, kind of like the “hypno-toad.”

We’ve added her to our loach tank with 14 smaller clowns roughly 2-5 inches in length and they seem very happy to have the giant among them. Nightly we observe a “loach jam” where most all the loaches in the tank choose to cram and stuff themselves around their new queen, regardless of where she chooses to stay the night. It’s really quite amusing to look at the tank with a flashlight after the lights are out and see loach heads and loach tails all sticking out from a single place.

I’ll try to get a picture of her posted eventually.

I only recently found out about the CARES fish preservation program. The basic idea is that it’s a group interested in getting responsible fishie-people to help ensure the survival of certain fish species.

I mentioned this to a friend at work who seemed skeptical. “Wouldn’t it just be better if people left them alone in the wild?” Well, yes and no, depending upon the circumstances. The easiest example to take is that of the African rift lake cichlids. These fish are found often only within a single lake in the wild.

In the case of Lake Victoria, one of the 3 lakes, many of the fish are either very endangered or already extinct. This is not due to people taking fish from the wild for the aquarium hobby. Instead it is due to the introduction of non-native fish species into the lake, the Nile Perch. The non-native species did not have much effect for about 20-30 years, but sometime in the late 20th century the non-native species began to dramatically out compete many of the native fish. Since these fish are only found within a single lake (albiet a very large one), that’s all it took. If I’m recalling correctly, the loss of various fish species from Lake Victoria is around 250-300 distinct species during the past 3 decades. That’s about half of all the fish species in that lake. However, some of the species managed to find suitable new homes in aquariums throughout the world. It’s because of this that some people in the aquarium hobby now have fish that are in fact extinct in nature. There are many other species that are critically endangered in the lake and, sadly, will probably only be found in captivity soon.

Because the entire ecosystem of the lake has changed, it is not a matter of simply putting these fish back into the lake. In fact, I’m not really aware of any great solution that will work in the long run. However, at least for now aquariums, zoos, and even hobbiests can help to keep the species alive.

As such we’ve decided to keep a couple of fish colonies that will be dedicated to endangered fish. We have 2 different groups in 2 of our tanks. 1 group is from Lake Victoria itself and is the Haplochromis obliquidens. So far we only have 4 of them, 1 male a 3 females. However, the male is very colorful and bossy. We expect a female to be holding soon. We’ve also go a tank setup around Tropheus duboisi Maswa with 19 of the little guys in it. Right now they’re all too young to really breed. But we’ve obtained them from 3 different sources to help keep them diverse and are optimistic.

I should try to post pictures soon.

This is our new boss, at least the new boss of our mbuna cichlid tank.

He is a Hongi fish, more specifically a “Super Red Top Zebra Hongi.” Whatever his name, he is the king of our buna.

One of Kerri’s Christmas presents was the promise of an aquarium. I actually had a small aquarium as a child for a number of years, but I don’t remember very much from it in terms of details. I believe the most important thing for the functioning of my childhood aquarium was my mother. However, since she’s in Texas I cannot count on her to take care of these.

We went today and purchased a 55 gallon (sigh, english units) tank, along with everything needed for it except for fish. We found a very nice little ``local fish shop” called Tropiquatics out in the western suburbs. They were very helpful and we left with everything we needed (including instructions on what to do). We’re planning on putting community tropical freshwater fish in the tank. Nothing very fancy to start.

A few things struck me as interesting about this process. First, I had assumed that a larger tank meant a more difficult tank to maintain. Instead it seems (according to our local experts) that a larger tank is easier to maintain and keep healthy. The reasoning here is that in a larger tank, there is more time to notice any problems developing in the tank or water chemistry. For a very small volume of water, the chemistry can become toxic quite quickly. For a large tank (that isn’t overstocked) things change more slowly. This makes sense, but we’ll see.

The other interesting thing is something I was unaware of from my youth. We must “cycle” the tank. This means that we need a few small, hardy fish to create waste, and then give the tank time to develop the correct bacteria to process the waste. Fish make ammonia. So we need bacteria to eat ammonia. However, while ammonia itself is toxic to fish, the bacteria that eat it, release nitrite. Nitrite is also toxic to fish. However, there are also bacteria that eat nitrite and make nitrate. The nitrate isn’t nearly as bad for fish as the other two. So, eventually we as fish keepers must change the water occasionally to get rid of some of the nitrate. But to start you wait and cultivate your own bacteria for the tank.

I’m actually a little sad that it was so hard to find this place. Looking through various internet searches basically reveals PetCo, Petland, PetSmart, and Walmart with very few independent stores. I suspect they may be a dying breed, instead being replaced by the super-store versions. Having worked at a similar super-store directly as a teen for books and music, I know how little knowledge it takes to be in charge of such a store. Hoping on good advice is really not something to be expected.