Jack Dempsey Breeding

[nanoinmiami]

Dear all,

Have a larger female JD (about 4 inches) I'd like to breed. Unfortunately, the only males I can find are on the small side, about 1 or 1 1/2 inches. Any chance of getting a small male and larger female to spawn from your experience?

Thank you

 

[Colin_T]

Sexing small Jack Dempsey cichlids is not that easy or reliable. You can look for longer pointy fins on the males but its not 100% until the fish are mature. And if the fish are from genetically poor stock it can make it hard to ID the males from females. Poor bloodlines can result in smaller weaker males looking like females and having short rounded fins.

As for breeding a small male and big female, it will probably end badly. Cichlids push each other around and lip lock/ wrestle to make sure their potential partner is big enough and strong enough to defend the territory, eggs and young. Having one fish 3 times the size of the other is just going to end badly.

If you can find some young unrelated fish, then feed them heaps, do lots of huge water changes and keep the water warm (around 28C) and in a few months they should catch up to the female in size. Then you can put them all together and let them pair off. But they need to be the same or very similar sized otherwise the smaller one usually gets hurt.

 

[nanoinmiami]

Sexing small Jack Dempsey cichlids is not that easy or reliable. You can look for longer pointy fins on the males but its not 100% until the fish are mature. And if the fish are from genetically poor stock it can make it hard to ID the males from females. Poor bloodlines can result in smaller weaker males looking like females and having short rounded fins.

As for breeding a small male and big female, it will probably end badly. Cichlids push each other around and lip lock/ wrestle to make sure their potential partner is big enough and strong enough to defend the territory, eggs and young. Having one fish 3 times the size of the other is just going to end badly.

If you can find some young unrelated fish, then feed them heaps, do lots of huge water changes and keep the water warm (around 28C) and in a few months they should catch up to the female in size. Then you can put them all together and let them pair off. But they need to be the same or very similar sized otherwise the smaller one usually gets hurt.

Thank you for your invaluable input as always.