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A Twist in Breeding Labeotropheus Trewavasae

By Joseph Gardner

1998 Issue 13

Today is January 1, 1998. I went downstairs and was checking out my 40 gallon breeder tank where I planned to remove fry from the mouth of a L. trewavasae. While I was moving the rocks out of the tank so I could catch the female, I noticed that the male black-top trewavasae seemed heavy in the mouth. After catching the orange female and removing 16 fry, I decided to see what was going on with my male. I had had a previous experience with a mbuna female brooding a clutch of gravel and slowly starving before I figured out what was going on.

I caught the male and pulled out my trusty airline. I put the airline in the mouth of the male and started the siphon action. I did not see anything at first, so I released the male back into the tank. As I lifted up the airline, I saw something move. Boy was I surprised to see a ¼” fry with well-developed yolk sack. It turned out there were 12 young fry. There were some differences between this spawning and the one with the 16 fry I had just removed from the orange female.

Baby trewavasae are easy to sex even with the egg sacks still attached. The females are orange and the males are blue. In this case, all of the fry were blue. This would be very unusual in the sense that in every other spawning I have had with other trewavasae, there was approximately a 50% split between males and the females, including the one I had just taken from the orange female. The ratio for that spawn was 9 males and 7 females.

The fry from the apparent male appear to be very robust. At first, I wondered if maybe the fish I thought was a black-top trewavasae was really a L. trewawasae. I am only aware of two species of mbuna with a big overbite, the L. trewavasae and the L. fuelleborni. I double checked the fish. In addition, it had the typical body shape of a trewavasae (long and torpedo shaped) and not the body shape of a fuelleborni which is much chunkier.

Nobody ever said fishkeeping would always be simple. I am left with a lot of questions and not much in terms of answers. Could the male trewavasae be brooding eggs? Could a female trewavasae be blue? Is it reasonable to assume all 12 of the fry are males? Is there the possibility this was a true hermaphadite? (To be honest, I do not really think there is a ghost of a chance of this option). I don’t know what I’ve got here but I do like the occasional mysteries in my life.

I will be taking a very close look at the development of these fry and see if any spawning takes place between these fry when they mature. I am also curious about how they will look when they are adults. the end