the majestic Parachromis dovii

[Willem Heijns]

I thought you might be curious to see my Parachromis dovii pair in the cichlidarium. therefore I made this little video of the pair that occupies one half of a 13 feet tank.
currently they have another batch of 200 fry.

[Thomas Andersen]

Wow, great stuff, Willem!

Is that an Amphilophus amarillo in the background in the begining of the video?

You should definitely do this more often

Thomas

[Aquamojo]

Great Stuff Willem.

[Esben]

Keep em coming.

Great little video.

Esben

[Florent]

Nice fish but one of the biggest cichlids

[Philippe Burnel]

wonderfull

[Lyle]

nice job on the video willem. btw, what type of camera do you shoot your footage with?

[Pei]

The male is impressive

[Willem Heijns]

I use a Sony TRV 900 (3CCD) camera

[k98]

nice!can you post a ss where we can see all the entire tank setup?

[Willem Heijns]

the setup of the tank can be seen in a picture that comes with my article on the Cichlidarium. it is obtainable from this site (see section articles).

[Thomas Andersen]

A direct link: http://www.cichlidae.info/article.php?id=366

[k98]

ty xenos

[Marco Arroyo]

Great video, i really like the scene you take from the mouth at the end, greetings

[k98]

omg i have to pay for a decent picture

[rickson]

Great Stuff Willem, Keep em coming.

[Willem Heijns]

another interesting observation: it seems dovii is practicing communal care for their offspring. the two pairs regularly produce a batch of new fry. soon after these start freeswimming they spread all over the tank and are accepted everywhere even by the non-breeding dovii pair. I believe that the dovii pairs only defend their territory and not their young. mind you, this is an observation of behaviour in captivity!
squeezed in between the dovii territories the amarillo pair still holds their own. they are so much impressed by the giant dovii (now 15") that they even let dovii fry pass through their territory unharmed. on the rare occasion that they do try and catch one (easy to spot by them raising their unpaired fins) a dovii from either left or right rushes in to very effectively make them change their mind. needless to say the amarillo has no chance of reproducing themselves.

[Willem Heijns]

trouble in paradise!
the dovii pair "from the right side" of the tank have decided that they have had enough. for the last week or so they had been slowly moving more and more to the left side of the tank. right into the territory of the other dovii pair. guarding a few young of their last spawn these at first defended their area well. until yesterday. upon checking the Cichlidarium I noticed both males having their fins torn and showing scratches on their bodies. the right male was clearly on the winning side showing better colours than it's opponent.

a funny sight: at the right side the tank is empty with fish for almost three meters; at the left side six fishes (the amarillo pair is still squeezed in the middle) are quarrelling.

today the defeated dovii male hid behind a piece of slate. it is relatively safe there.

complicating factor: tomorrow I leave for Scotland to practice my other hobby and I won't be back for three weeks.

[Marko Lenac]

what is a piece of slate?

[Bas Pels]

As this was also posted in Dutch on another forum, the piece of slate is a flat rcok - such as flagstone (I can only hope it is in English the smae as in Dutch)

Bas