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Breeding Pseudotropheus Flavus
By Patrick Miller
Jan/Feb 2006 Issue #34
I love going to GVAC fish auctions. Actually, I love going to just about any club fish auction. You never know what you are going to find and what adventures your find will bring. Take for example the September 2005 GVAC auction. I specifically went to this auction to find live bearers and plants.
The fish at the auction were not a disappointment and I was happy to see some good looking livebearers. At the auction I purchased 9 Limia nigrofascata (humpback limia), 8 Xenophallus umbratilis (golden teddy’s) and 2 Limia vittata. In all of the excitement of bidding I also purchased three tanks. But those livebearers were not the only fish that I purchased at the auction. A pair of Pseudotropheus flavus came up for bid. I am not a big African cichlid person but when they said that it was a mated pair the thought of BAP points and a fun opportunity to breed a fish unknown to me ran through my head. I bid on the fish and ended up purchasing them for only $3.
It really was a better deal than you may think. Now most of the time when I purchase fish I have an idea of the tank requirements for the fish. However, I must confess that I new nothing about the Pseudotropheus flavus I had purchased except that they were mouth brooders and came from a rocky environment with little plant life. Just the type of tank I normally don’t have set up. All of my tanks to this point were set up with heavy vegetation and no caves. I knew I would have to set up a new tank for the fish. Lucky for me I had three new tanks that I had also purchased at the auction. I decided I would try to incorporate both plants and some caves into their tank to see if I could get the P. flavus to do well in a heavily planted tank with a fewer number of caves. Yes, for those of you reading this article I did set up a tank and put fish in it the same day. I use the method described by Diana Walstad in her book ECOLOGY of the PLANTED AQUARIUM and I have not had a problem with or lost or sick fish from nitrate, nitrite or ammonia pollution.
The fish seemed to like their new quarters. On Sunday, the day after the auction, I looked into the tank and found that not only did I have two Adult Pseudotropheus flavus but I also had 9 fry swimming around. I told you that $3 was a good deal. It really proves that you need to really look closely at all of the fish at the auction. At the time I purchased the fish I couldn’t tell that the female had fry in her mouth but I can tell now. If more cichlid people had taken the time to really look at the fish I bet the sell price would have been a lot higher than $3. At any rate, I removed the fry to another tank so that the parents wouldn’t bother them and then donated the fry to the GVAC at the following meeting. The fry sold for the low price of only a dollar or two. Yet another good reason to attend the monthly GVAC meetings you often find good deals on fish that you can’t often find in the stores.
After seeing the fry on that Sunday morning, I knew that I really did have a breeding pair and that I was going to have a good chance to breed them. I did some research on how long it would take before the female would be conditioned to breed again but didn’t have much luck. The fish were doing fine in their 20L tank so I left them to become accustomed to their new tank. The male fish was very active at digging so, after a couple weeks, I turned down the temperature from 80 deg to 73 deg thinking that cooler temperatures would slow down the male’s activity. This worked, after a day or two he let up on the digging and didn’t seem to chase the female around as much. After a few weeks of the lower temperature, the female looked pretty fat so I turned the thermostat back up to 80deg. They loved the new warmer temperature. The male really stepped up his activity and started moving great piles of sand around and the female started to show some interest in the male’s advances. It had only been about 5 weeks since they moved into the 20 gal tank that I had set up for them and they were already back into the mood for breeding.
I like to think that it was the great tank set up that brought them into breeding condition. By this time the left half of the tank was so thick with plants I couldn’t spot the fish when they were hiding in the leaves. And they loved to hid in the plants. Both the male and female would sit dead center of the large knot of plants. The male in a pit he had dug and the female about 3 inches above him in the leaves. The plant life in the tank was a mixture of Valisinaria, narrow leaf Hygrophila, dwarf Sagittarius, Najas grass and duck weed floating on the surface.
In truth, it probably wasn’t the great tank set up the fish were responding to but the increase in water temperature and the diet that included frozen blood worms twice every three days and flake one to two times each day. What ever it was that made them happy it was easy to see that they were a happy pair of fish. The female was carrying a new brood of fry around buy week 7 after the auction. You couldn’t quite see the fish in her mouth but she was starting to become skinny from not eating. Not knowing what to expect from the male fish, towards the fry, at the beginning of week 8 I removed him to another tank so that the new fry would not be bothered. At the end of week 8 a few fry had made their way from the female’s mouth and were busy trying not to be scooped back into it. A few days after I saw the first free swimming fry the female let all of them out of her mouth. For the next couple of days I couldn’t tell how many were in the brood because the female would scoop up the fry whenever I approached the tank. I started the fry on two feedings a day with one feeding crushed flake and the other frozen daphnia. By the end of week 9 I had counted 16 fry. Seven more fry than the brood that the female had when I purchased her at the September Auction. At the end of week 10, the point in which I am writing this article, I am very happy to see all of the fry healthy and growing on fine.
It has been a lot of fun breeding this fish. I think that everyone who is interested in breeding fish should try to breed an African mouth brooder. They are pretty, lots of fun and very rewarding fish to breed. I look forward to future auctions were I know I will find some more great fish to keep and breed. After all you never know what you will find or what adventures you will have when you visit a GVAC fish auction.
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