Mouthbrooding Kribs?

[Darrell Ullisch]

Someone on another forum recently commented on how his female Krib takes her four remaining fry into her mouth to protect them when some larger fish come near. Right after he made this comment, another person started saying that his were doing the same thing! I have never heard of a Pelvicachromis holding their fry like a mouthbrooder, has anyone here ever heard of this before? Or do you think as I do that there's something wrong here, either the ID of the fish, or they are mistaking taking the fry and moving them for mouthbrooding. I'm really curious if anyone here has heard of such a thing.

[Sam Chicklets]

Have you looked at Chromadotilapia Guentheri. Spencer Jack has them listed as mouthbrooding kribs.

[Darrell Ullisch]

I've bred Chromidotilapia guntheri, and currently have some Benitochromis conjunctus that I need to pay more attention to. No, these people were talking about plain old P. pulcher. That's why I was curious if anyone else had heard of them holding fry like mouthbrooders. I think they were just mistaking normal fry moving behavior with true mouthbrooding.

[Rico Morgenstern]

I have never heard of such a behaviour in P. pulcher, but it is reported from tho other Pelvicachromis species in German magazines:

Seehausen, O. (1988): "Maulbrütende Pelvicachromis?" Die Aquarien- und Terrarienzeischrift (DATZ) 41 (10): 404-405

I have not read the original article, but it is quoted in a cichlid book of H. J. Mayland (1995: "Cichliden"). The species in question is called Pelvicachromis cf. roloffi by Seehausen. It was the female, which took the fry into her mouth.

Hasselmann, M. (2004): "Zeigt Pelvicachromis taeniatus Tendenzen zum Maulbrüten?" DCG-Informationen 35 (3): 58-60

Here is some kind of mouthbrooding behaviour reported in several Nigerian forms P. taeniatus. In this cases, the male was the "mouthbrooding" fish, and only a part of the fry was taken into the mouth.

A similar behavior has been reported in this forum on the Gabonese "Hemichromis stellifer" (which is actually a distinct species), see:

http://www.cichlidae.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=388&sid=f94acf1bfad82be6c5cdb3a00cd553ce

Finally I have own observations to this in two other West/Central African species, namely Tilapia zillii and the true Hemichromis stellifer from the Congo. In both species I observed "mouthbrooding" in community tanks some days after the fry started to swim, when their number already was reduced. It was either the male or the female which tooks the fry into mouth, but never both parents simultanously.

RM

[Darrell Ullisch]

Thanks Rico! The specific situation involved a female P. pulcher with only 4 surviving fry, so it fits the template you've described. So apparently they aren't crazy, I was just underinformed!

[Sam Chicklets]

My breeding pair of kribs will gather up their young and bring them back if they stray away from the rest of the brood.

[alpha_mare]

My kribs do the same thing. Once the fry are fry, they will protect them from danger, both the male and female will take in what they can fit and carry them off and spit them out and get more. They move them, sometimes will hold them if they don't feel they can safely spit them out. This is usually while the fry are still scooting around near the floor of the tank, as they start to become free swimmers, it happens less often. They always leave the cave with the fry out, and the female makes jerking movements with her head that seem to be a way to communicateto the fry. That is weird. They seem to stay in a group or follow her when she does it. The male also herds them and moves them if need be. I have seen the eggs hatching on substrate. it seems just to be a "moving" thing in my case but the male and female both work together.

[westafrica]

Hi,

This is a very interesting thread . This subject has also been evoked on our forum recently : http://www.cichlidsforum.fr/-vp252453.html#252453 (sorry, it's in french). One link to one video showing P. taeniatus taking the fry in their mouth for dozens of seconds was posted in this topic.

Personnally, I noticed such behavior with P. taeniatus (Kienke, Nigeria yellow and Lobe forms) and P. subocellatus matadi, but it varies in intensity depending not only on forms (more frequent in Nigerian forms) but also on pairs among the same form. I also saw Enigmatochromis lucanusi show same behavior once : half of the fry had been "vacuumed" in the filter, I had recovered them and put them back in the tank, with little hope that the parents would recover them. They did (especially the male), and the male kept the fry in mouth for 2 minutes or so while they kept looking for the remaining lost fry - I even thought he wasn't recognizing them and was eating them. Here you can see my male close from recovering an isolated fry by taking it in mouth and spitting it back in the group :


And here in the background, one can see the female with one / several fry in mouth, about to spit them back in the group :


One constant item is that when holding the fry the Pelvicachromis seem to feel uncomfortable (quick moves, fast breathing) and behave like they want to spit them asap, which may show that they don't (yet?) have the morphological features that allow to hold fry for long, unlike H. stellifer, which seems to be able to keep the fry in mouth for several minutes without seeming ill at ease. I also noticed that this behavior is not automatic (i. e. danger => fry in mouth), that the fry was never willing to go in their parents' mouth, and that the fry were mainly taking in mouth for gathering / move purpose.

Therefore, in case some Pelvicachromis are on their way to a transition to systematic mouthbreeding, I think they are not very far on this path yet, unlike Limbochromis robertsi for instance, which may give us an idea of how some Pelvicachromis might evolve in far future.

Jérôme

[Foai]

Mouthbrooding tecnique has evolved from substrate spawning.
So it's not a big suprise choosing "partial mouthbrooding" for a African cichlid like Krib or related species...

That's how the true mouthbrooders evolved.If there's a predator pressure on fry or eggs ,they can try different approaches like this.
As their ancestors did.Cichlids are one of the most adaptable fish species in the world due to feeding and breeding tecniques.