q for any cichlid keepers

I was chillen at my friends the other night and was watching his cichlid tank - we think that his pair of johanni are breeding as the female looks to be carrying eggs....

the wierd behavour I saw was i duno interesting? we couldnt figuve out exactly what the fish where doing.. I thought they where first mating but now i'm thinkin it was more of a fight.... Basically what happened was a female p.saulosi was locking lips, circulating and doing alot of body "shaking" she was doing this with the male johanni.... anyone have any idea what was going on ? I figure they where fighting?

[Shane Tesser]

Hey buddy, It totally depends on the fish, ive seen this before with some of mine, and presto, babies soon follow. Ive also seen this with fish of the same sex. Kind of a battle for dominance. Julies are really territorial, but with that said, they could be actually just sizing up a mate. I would give them they're own tank and see what happens. Fill it with water from the original tank, and then after about a day start doing 1/4 water changes. Do this for about two weeks and either they will breed or.......or perhaps the female will have a headache......man, i can just hear the responses im gonna get for that one, lol. s.t.

thing is these are two totally diff species... a p.saulosi *female* and the male is a johani, he must be really horny cause he allready knocked up the female johani

:P

[Shane Tesser]

Well, ill have to be careful with this problem. I think we are about to open a can of worms here, but here goes. You can in fact often breed fish of a different species. like snakes, or any other species of animal it is possible. There is several idea's of thought for this, and i don't really want to start a huge debate, but its probably unavoidable now. Alot of people strongly disagree with doing this. Ive been on sites and the immediate answer people have is to kill the off spring. Seperate the fish, don't let them breed period. Here is my thought for what it is worth. I think that the entire hobby has enough species now to pick from that the idea of taking that or any animal out of the wild is no longer neccessary. Now sometimes it is required to restore the beauty of a fish, ie. the flame tetra, they use to be brilliant, but now are somewhat very drab. So breeders will take wild ones to restore the blood line. This, im somewhat okay with (im gonna sit on the fence here). Now i personally don't see problems with so called ******* fish, unless it effects their ability to be mobile, or eat, or simply function. Somewhat of an example is the parrot fish. It is a cross, very colourful, and interesting, but often suffer from deformed mouths which makes it difficult for them to eat. They have improved over the last couple of years though. Now on the other hand there is several solid species that would never have been developed, ie. the blue Jack dempsey comes to mind. These are incredible if you've never seen one. So ill try to keep this short and say hey, if they breed they breed. If they are deformed they should be humanly disposed of. If they are okay, congrats you made a new fish, so i guess if you could breed them true, you get to name them ie. Momentusadamissuprise, lol. So if we can make healthy interesting fish, perhaps we can stop raping the natural habits, and that would be so cool, shane.

[corr]

I agree with Shane here. There are a lot of people that would go ballistic if they found out someone was cross breeding fish. I don't have a problem with it. However, raising these fish to adulthood only to end up in the "Assorted African" tank at the local fish store, because they can't be identified is somewhat irresponsible. Leave them in the tank and let nature take it's course.

[Shane Tesser]

Exactly, don't sell these to the stores. Just enjoy your creations, im still trying to cross breed my discus with a goldfish.....joking. s.t.