Females Xenotilapias not holding their egg?

[Carl]

OK, hera comes my second question at this forum:
Both my X.flavipinnis (Lyamembe) and my X sp."Sunflower" (Isanga) breeds quite often, I´ve had them for just over a year, but I don´t get any fry, they don´t go more then a couple of days, two pairs of both spicies. What do you say? The first 7-8 monyhs they were almost alone in a 840-l (just some Killis) so they were not disturbed. I´ve spoken to some of my fellow cichlidists in sweden and they report the same problem.
Sometimes I wonder if they are not properly fertilized, that would explain why it´s allways juat 2-3 days they hold, but I don´t know.
Any hints?
I´m not find of artificial breeding (that´s why I love biparental mouthbrouders).
Thanks
Carl

[Thomas Andersen]

Hi Carl

Yes, it sounds like the eggs aren’t fertilized properly – I’ve had the same problem with my group of Xenotilapia bathyphila, they spawned and spawned but the females didn’t hold for more than 2 or 3 days.

Then I saw a spawning and noticed that the spawning male were very, very busy chasing other X. bathyphila males away – the other males were not actually disturbing the spawning pair, but the spawning male chased them away if they came nearer than 1 to 1.3 meter into his sight – it seemed quite unnecessary, and the result was that he barely had time to fertilize any eggs, before he went out on another chasing round. So, I tried splitting up the X. bathyphila group and placed each male with a couple of females in separate tanks. The result was quite good - the females hold the eggs and larvae as they should and produced nice batches of fry. Have you observed anything similar with a male being more interested in chasing other males than fertilize the eggs?

Your tank is very large, so it there should be plenty of room for pairs to find a quiet spot to spawn – I don’t know how you have decorated your tank, but maybe you could scatter some rocks on the bottom and in that way reduce the visibility between the fishes?

Is there anyone else that has tried solving “the unfertilized egg problem”?

Thomas

[Carl]

First: Sorry for my bad spelling, it seems like I´m in a hurry when I´m writing....
Thanks for your reply. I agree, at least it sounds reasonable, but it has been quite calm in the tank though... Maybe I´ll try with some more rocks to give them more privacy. No problem with the water, the other species get living end healthy fry.

About the rocks, and just for my curiousity, and not that I mind:Do you actally consider the Sunflower to be a Sandsifter? I´ve been to the lake twice and never ever seen a sunflower even close to sand (But yes, they act like a sandsifter in the tank, probably because we don´t provide the the same mineralrich algeagrowth and stuff lika that the lake provides)
in sweden we had the same discussion about the O.ventralis that some keeps calling a "sandcichlid" and I loudly diagree...
Note! this is not a complaint!

Anyway, thanks
Carl

[Thomas Andersen]

Yes, you’re quite right, Xenotilapia sp. "papilio sunflower" is not a sandsifter, nor is X. papilio or X. leptura for that matter, and I’m fully aware of this – but being in the genus Xenotilapia they share a lot of common morphological and behavioral traits with the “real” sand-dwellers, so they are just lumped in the sand-dweller category to make a complex thing a little easier - and O. ventralis are definitely not a sand-dwelling cichlid - so I think we agree

Thomas

[Carl]

Yepp, we agree!
(I think I´ll need to check my keyboard here, I still spell like a 3-year old).
/Carl