Nanochromis teugelsi

[anewbie1]

Ok - plants are showing some slight growth - also see a lot of new roots on the e. 'rose'.

I won't post many plants pictures but if that grass catches fire i will definitely prune it to keep it under control.

 

[anewbie1]

So i believe the tank is fully cycled - on tuesday i'll put the canister filter back together - test the water on wednesday and a week from tuesday remove the sponge filter next to the canister filter return and we will be done. The male/female have definitely not bonded. He stays in his cave and she - well she is on the opposite side. How they will ever get together if he stays in his cave i have no clue:

 

[anewbie1]

A few more pictures - something weird happened today - when i went into the room the male and female were together in front and under a leaf - i don't think the quite bonded yet but they seem close. Previously in the 10 he always chased her and she hung out in corners. For the 20 minutes i watched them there was no chasing and she felt quite comfortable with him.

Not quite sharp and a bit of glare but most of the pictures of her is like this one:

Though i did catch her eating:

Both the male and female will graze off of food that falls on a leaf so i try to get a bit down there for them - and this is the male who is much more shy of the phone:

He is about twice her length.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford30 145]

She's looking ripe.

 

[anewbie1]

This is a minor update - removed the right most sponge filter; replace the prefilter with a longer sponge so i could anchor it in the substrate pushing it to the back (it kept wanting to spring forward). Fixed the plastic strip in the back of the lid. Nothing else to really report. Might be a while before the next update unless they surprise me in their behavior:

 

[anewbie1]

I wasn't going to take any more pictures for a hwile but i thought i would note this oddity. Yesterday as we see in the above picture just before i left the room things are fairly clean:

Yet this morning we found this pile:

So obviously someone needed a blanket for the night sleep or more likely someone is building sand castles.

 

[anewbie1]

I think they may have spawned fingers crossed - the female is now skinny and she darts out grab food and darts back in - unfortunately their nest is way way way under stuff so i can't peek in - what i need is one of those cable optics thingy to push in there and see what is happening. Of course i might be in for a *BIG* disappointment.

 

[anewbie1]

Both parents came out to grab some food - still no visible frys - probably didn't hatch. But you can see how much weight she lost from earlier pictures:

After grabbing a bit of food they immediately return to their cave and in truth none of the current fishes are going to enter the cave.

 

[anewbie1]

We have.....

 

[anewbie1]

These are hardly worth posting but the frys are very well developed - when injecting bbs they sometime swim quit high which causes mom to frown at them; however the pictures aren't very good:

You can see he's right on top of them as he moves off to let mom take over the frys pop up a bit:

They are very good parents much better than most of the other dwarf cichild i've kept and they do a good job of using the leaves always trying to keep the leaves between the frys and possible predators. Very large spawn hazard to guess how many but would not be shocked if over 50; do not expect them all to make it naturally but so far they are very active. Was a bit worry with the aquarium immaturity they would not find enough food.

 

[anewbie1]

From this morning - probably last set of pictures for a few hours ? days ? weeks? months? years?

The first picture shows that even after a few days they are willing to swim quite high and are growing very fast.

 

[anewbie1]

So here we inject bbs and the frys go wild:

And then 5 or 10 minutes later after most of the bbs is eaten the parents manage to get them back under control:

 

[GaryE29 144]

These are great pictures telling a great story.

I got some teugelsi yesterday, so we can form our own obscure club. I also acquired some "real" Nanochromis nudiceps, the one everyone thinks is common but not many of us have actually seen (we see N. parilus). Those and a pair of wild caught Pelvicachromis pulcher, common kribs.

I hope I do as well with them as you are doing.

 

[anewbie1]

These are great pictures telling a great story.

I got some teugelsi yesterday, so we can form our own obscure club. I also acquired some "real" Nanochromis nudiceps, the one everyone thinks is common but not many of us have actually seen (we see N. parilus). Those and a pair of wild caught Pelvicachromis pulcher, common kribs.

I hope I do as well with them as you are doing.

You do know i kept them in a 10 for like 3 months and felt so guilty i broke down and got them a 29 - definitely a fish that deserve 30 to 48 inches min. The other fish i have that you might find interest are the Nanochromis transvestitus - these are very pretty and behave a bit differently - unfortunately the frys from the first spawn did not make it (no clue why). They are also a lot smaller.
-

I know nothing about Nanochromis nudiceps though from the brief description i wonder if it requires strong current.

 

[anewbie1]

So rather than put these else where i thought i would put them here and then comment on some differences:

So we had a conversation about a 10 with Enigmatochromis lucanusi and obviously it worked out pretty well. Again I think they deserve a larger aquarium but they are not as active or as large as the Nanochromis teugelsi. The male and female were never that aggressive to each other though it took around 2 to 3 months for the pair to form. Again they tend to use leaves to quasi hide their frys and it is a real pain to get the phone to focus correctly. Unfortunately the male did a number of hte jelly beans so the few i had put in there now seems to be fewer. The one big oddity is the parents seem to put the kids away somewhere (i don't know where yet) after feeding time. So they will bring them out (maybe 15 to 20) take them around to feed then stuff them somewhere (maybe there is a cave under the driftwood?) and come back out without the frys. Makes feeding them bbs a little of a pain but i caught them out this morning and the frys were very responsive to gobbling down everything i put in. This is a bit different than the teugelsi who seem to have all the frys out all the time - of course their spawn is much larger.