Curious question about mouth brooders

[SammyTargo]

Hello All,

I found a random breeding tumbler in my storage that I don’t even know how I acquired, and then I became curious.

I had a question about mouth brooders and tumblers, since I have never bred them and have barely any experience with them. I don’t even own them .

For the mouth brooders, I think they come mostly from Lake Malawi, I’ve seen a lot of people throw the eggs/fry in a tumbler, to stop fungal infections from killing the fry.

My question is whether it is needed, and new world mouth brooders or non mouth brooding cichlids ever need the tumbler? I had a spare one that I don’t even know how I got.

 

[GaryE29 144]

Mouthbrooders are many different things. Some pick up larvae after guarding eggs. Some start by picking up the eggs. Some share the mouthbrooding between male and female. Some provide extensive broodcare after the fry are released, working in pairs.
And then you have so called primitive mouthbrooders, like Malawi mbuna. There, the male only fertilizes the eggs, which are picked up and brooded by the female. He takes off looking for his next partner.
Once she spits out the fry, she's done. They're on their own. But since she's alone on the job and her mouth is full of eggs and then larvae, she doesn't eat. She loses weight. As soon as she unloads, in a fishtank, the male is right there ready to breed again. Being a mother too many times too quickly starves her, and she can die.
So you steal the eggs to give her a break, and if you are responsible, you give her a break to recover. The artificially raised eggs, larvae and fry give you what you want to sell. You can raise good numbers of them, and save the female from an early death.
You can also save the fry in an overcrowded tank with predatory species around. They hatch in the tumbler, and are kept oxygenated and clean by the water movement. You can then raise them in a separate tank.

 

[TwoTankAmin25]

I have always been curious about fish reproduction and how many ways this can happen. I had had an assortment of fish breed in my tanks which are not suited to the African Rift lake fish. But I really wanted to see moth brooding in action. In 2003 I was going to my very first weekend fish event, the OCA annubal event in The Cleveland area.

I picked this because a number of the people on the fish forum and chat room I frequented would be there. Don Ziliox, aka Zman, was in his early 70s and getting ready to mostly retire from the hobby. He was a legend in the Apisto breeding community. He offered to give me a pair of Pseudocrenilabrus nicholsi:

Pseudocrenilabrus nicholsi is a species of cichlid native to the Congo Basin in Africa. As other members of the genus Pseudocrenilabrus, it is a mouthbrooder.

The female held the eggs etc. her mouth. What I did not know at the time was that thi species was considered, inch for inch, one of th most aggressive cichlid species. To succeed took me a few tries, First one needs to remove the male after the female is holding as he will continue to harass her as he always wants to spawn. So I needed to remove him from the tank. The I got my first spawn and mom finally spit them and I was very happy to see mom and kids doing fine. And then 26 hours later only mom was left in the tank, She ate all the kids.

So the next try I managed to strip the fry when they were close to being released and I removed the female as well as the male. I was able to raise the fry to where they were too big to eat. When I returned the pair to the tank, he promptly killed her. So I recruited one of their daughters to become the new female of a pair.

But the whole process proved to be a fair amount of work on my part and I decided to sell and give away all of the P. nicholsi as I had gotten them so I could observe the whole moth brooding process. It was mission accomplished and I wanted the tanks for other uses.

Btw, I have never used a tumbler in all the years fish have spawned in my tanks. I have likely raised a few 1,000 fish born in my tanks over the past 25 years with even owning a tumbler. But I mostly worked with plecos. They are very helpful as they do all the work and then present me with healthy free swimming offspring.

 

[SammyTargo]

But I mostly worked with plecos. They are very helpful as they do all the work and then present me with healthy free swimming offspring.

Plecos I found to be easy to breed, at least the bristlenose. I have bred them in the past, on requests via people saying they would buy. I do not like plecos. I think they are machines that mass produce waste and increase bioload. I prefer otocinclus or other algae eaters. But yes, they are quite simple when presented with the right conditions.

 

[TwoTankAmin25]

I bred mostly the B&W Hypancistrus. They are omnivpores which like meat. They do not produce anywhere near the amount of poop that the vegetarian or algae eaters even when they are Aufwuchs feeders. I had 1,000s of offspring born over the past 19 years. I got my first group of breeding zebra plecos in Apr. 2006. I did start with ancistrus, but they were way to prolific and difficult to sell faster than they spawned. My final BN spawn was over 100 eggs. A big Hypancisrus spawn was 15-20 eggs and not all would be viable.

In 2007 when I began selling zebra offspring at 1.5 inches the going price was $150/fish (today the price is a lot lower). The price for a similar sized BN was about $4 back then. Mnay BN breed like rabbits. Today I have gone back to having BN, but I do not allow them to spawn, I keep only one sex in a tank. Mostly these are females. I buy them at my club auction which mnean I get both sexes, I just separate them and then saell off the males for the most part. They are more territorial than the females which makes ig easy to keep a few gals in a tanks where a few makes will likely fight.

 

[GaryE29 144]

One of my favourite sights in the aquarium is when you have complex mouthbrooders who exchange young. When you feed them, one will eat then rush to the other and take the fry into its mouth, letting the other partner go for food. They trade back and forth at various times of the day, and herd together and pick up the fry for the night.
I have some young, steadily growing Chromidotilapia kingsleyae that should do that. I don't usually keep fish as large as they get (good for my 120 gallon at 13 to 15cm) as they are a step above dwarfs, but that show is worth it. I've seen it with Chromidoptilapia nana and guntheri in the past, and filmed the former. I've also seen it with SA mouthbrooders.


Mouthbrooders with brood care post release are way better than Haplochromines, who don't worry about the fate of their young. Using a tumbler with Chromidotilapia would be really cheating yourself of a chance to watch something great.

 

[gwand30 146]

I was reading up on Apistogramma sp D50. They are one of the few facultative larvophile mouthbrooding Apistogramma species.
According to Tom C, facultative means that mouthbrooding occurs optionally in response to circumstances rather than by nature.
So sometimes you will see mouthbrooding, other times they breed like most others Apistogramma, without any mouthbrooding. Pretty cool.

 

[GaryE29 144]

You see degrees of mouthbrooding too. For example, both Apistogramma and Pelvicachromis will pick up the freeswimming fry and roll them in the mouth, appearing to clean them off.

 

[gwand30 146]

You see degrees of mouthbrooding too. For example, both Apistogramma and Pelvicachromis will pick up the freeswimming fry and roll them in the mouth, appearing to clean them off.

I witnessed that from a male in my first successful spawn but not since. At first I thought the adult male was eating his fry. But he gently released them from his large maw.

 

[TwoTankAmin25]

This is the definition of facultative:

Fac·ul·ta·tive
/ˈfak(ə)lˌtādiv/


adjective
adjective: facultative
occurring optionally in response to circumstances rather than by nature.
"the difference between facultative skin pigmentation and constitutive pigmentation is a function of overall sun exposure"

• Biology
  capable of but not restricted to a particular function or mode of life.
  "a facultative parasite"

I am familiar with the term facultative when applied to the bacteria we may halve in our filters and/or substrate. They are the ones most likely to be doing denitrification in a tank. When there is oxygen in the water, they will use that. But when there is no oxygen they can switch to using nitrate. When they do this they produce nitrogen gas which ends up back in the air and is the final stage in the nitrogen cycle.

It is most common to have facultative bacteria in media with many passageways possible for the water. In some areas where there is biofilm for the nitrifying bacteria that in some passageways through the foam will have water leaving the biofilm where all the oxygen has been used up. There are are also other bacteria living in this biofilm as well which also use oxygen. So if there are facultative bacteria in this flow pattern with no oxygen but with nitrate and there are facultative bacteria in this flow, they will use the nitrate.

I get this in my Mattenfilters

 

[GaryE29 144]

I kept one of the mouthbrooding Apistogramma when they were first brought in, but unfortunately, they never spawned. I really wanted to see how they were as parents, which is always what I want to see with Cichlids. I've been fortunate with the Cichlids I have been able to keep here, as I've gotten to see some very amazing sights.
I have seen all the types of mouthbrooding in action, except facultative ones like D50. The ones I've kept have been obligatory mouthbrooders.
I've also enjoyed my few brushes with mouthbrooding Bettas.
The least interesting were Malawis, the most interesting Chromidotilapia from western Africa, and the touchiest have been the Bettas, where the male does all the brooding and can too easily swallow the young if stressed.
There's always something more to be seen and learned about in this hobby.