Ok a Krib ?

[wwestar2000]

Well I bought a female albino krib a while ago with hopes of breeding her. So i went to the lfs yesturday and there were only 2 males. Thing is they were huge! At least compare to the female. Like 4 times bigger maybe more. Can they breed even though the size difference? Im guessing it will take her a long time to get his size.... Will there be any danger with them together? He is always hiding and when he is out the female is at least four inchs away from him. So im guessing there is intrest. Heres some pics. Sorry i couldn't get the female good but you could see the albino outline.
female

male

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p.s the male has been extremely peacefull to every fish in the tank. So i would be suprised if she gets hurt.

 

[wwestar2000]

anyone?

 

[pica_nuttalli]

you just wait until courtship starts. mine are the same size in a 60g with mostly top-dwellers and plecos. once they start courting, the male is pretty vigorous in chasing her around the tank--lotta fin damage.

you've got far, far too many cichlids in that 20g--especially if one pair is already old enough to start breeding. every last fish you have in that tank is going to grow much larger and more aggressive. you need to start thinning the ranks and setting up at least two bigger tanks immediately

 

[wwestar2000]

you just wait until courtship starts. mine are the same size in a 60g with mostly top-dwellers and plecos. once they start courting, the male is pretty vigorous in chasing her around the tank--lotta fin damage.

you've got far, far too many cichlids in that 20g--especially if one pair is already old enough to start breeding. every last fish you have in that tank is going to grow much larger and more aggressive. you need to start thinning the ranks and setting up at least two bigger tanks immediately

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Im actaully going to put the 3 angels in a 30 gallon. And once the keyholes have there first broad i am going to sell the keyhole thats not part of the pair with the fry. Or maybe before if i find a way. So by next week it will be. 2 kribs 3 keyholes and a ballon ram. Hopefully the keyholes will pair off quick so i could put one in my 10 gallon with my ballons. There already showing sex so im guessing pretty soon. Looks like 2 males and 1 female. So eventaull my tank will hold 2 keyholes 2 kribs and thats it. I think my ram and his new pair im looking for will be in my ten gallon after i get the angels out and think what im gonna do.

 

[wwestar2000]

Wait so do you think the female will be in danger? I always read the female was the one who was mostly aggressive. And recommended getting a smaller female. Im just scared mine is to small.

 

[wwestar2000]

bump

 

[caspercanuck]

i never had much luck with smaller females... maybe an inch at most, but 4x the size sounds like trouble to me..

your male looks stressed... you should try and put some things in the tank to help it calm down... some plants or pots.. something to hide in and feel more secure..

hiding places are a good idea also considering the amount of fish you have in there, and the temperment of them as well...

i would keep a close eye on them

 

[pica_nuttalli]

So eventaull my tank will hold 2 keyholes 2 kribs and thats it.

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i just now thought about this sentence. are you intending to keep a breeding pair of kribs in with keyholes in just a 20g? if so, that is a Bad Plan based on my recent experience with breeding kribs. please remember, my tank is 48x12x24 which is a lot bigger than a standard 20g.

here's the order in which things happened:
--June 19th, i came home and found fry.

--June 20th, momma krib decided that the babies were edible; daddy krib was actively abandoning the babies and hunting her down. as a temporary measure, i put her in a guppy breeding net and daddy krib was STILL trying to attack her. she lost over half of her tail, had a shredded dorsal, and was just pretty well beaten up all over. this was all in less than a day's time that he could access her in a 60g with multiple caves, chunks of driftwood, and at the time, dense stands of plants.

--Mr. Krib then turned his focus on the rest of the tank and would attack anything within a foot of his babies. the tank was essentially cut in half for two weeks; you could almost see the line marking out Mr. Krib's territory.

--somewhere along the way, the guppies and platies started to be ignored. however, anything larger was attacked if it approached too close. this included the plecos who suffered many a torn dorsal.

--i removed my buenos aires tetras around July 19th. Mr. Krib was still attacking them at that point

--Mr. Krib did not stop attacking the plecos until a week ago. I added a dojo loach shortly thereafter; it was terrorized for an entire two days before being deemed harmless.

--Today, six weeks since I first found fry, Mr. Krib got into another fight with the Paradise fish. All the Paradise fish did was be 3 inches long and swim lower than 6 inches from the surface.


Until I had fry, the only trouble my kribs gave me was when the bristlenose kept trying to steal their cave. My male krib is maybe 2" long and the female ~1.5". I sincerely doubt that you can keep anything with a breeding pair of kribs and their fry in just a 20g. Like I said, based on my experiences, that sounds like a Bad Plan.

 

[Elisabeth83]

So eventaull my tank will hold 2 keyholes 2 kribs and thats it.

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i just now thought about this sentence. are you intending to keep a breeding pair of kribs in with keyholes in just a 20g? if so, that is a Bad Plan based on my recent experience with breeding kribs. please remember, my tank is 48x12x24 which is a lot bigger than a standard 20g.

here's the order in which things happened:
--June 19th, i came home and found fry.

--June 20th, momma krib decided that the babies were edible; daddy krib was actively abandoning the babies and hunting her down. as a temporary measure, i put her in a guppy breeding net and daddy krib was STILL trying to attack her. she lost over half of her tail, had a shredded dorsal, and was just pretty well beaten up all over. this was all in less than a day's time that he could access her in a 60g with multiple caves, chunks of driftwood, and at the time, dense stands of plants.

--Mr. Krib then turned his focus on the rest of the tank and would attack anything within a foot of his babies. the tank was essentially cut in half for two weeks; you could almost see the line marking out Mr. Krib's territory.

--somewhere along the way, the guppies and platies started to be ignored. however, anything larger was attacked if it approached too close. this included the plecos who suffered many a torn dorsal.

--i removed my buenos aires tetras around July 19th. Mr. Krib was still attacking them at that point

--Mr. Krib did not stop attacking the plecos until a week ago. I added a dojo loach shortly thereafter; it was terrorized for an entire two days before being deemed harmless.

--Today, six weeks since I first found fry, Mr. Krib got into another fight with the Paradise fish. All the Paradise fish did was be 3 inches long and swim lower than 6 inches from the surface.


Until I had fry, the only trouble my kribs gave me was when the bristlenose kept trying to steal their cave. My male krib is maybe 2" long and the female ~1.5". I sincerely doubt that you can keep anything with a breeding pair of kribs and their fry in just a 20g. Like I said, based on my experiences, that sounds like a Bad Plan.

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I completely agree with what pica_nuttalli says. I bought a pair of kribs thinking they would make a great community fish for my 30 gallon. Some sites say they are and other says it wont work that they are too aggressive especially during breeding time that tankmates will be made into lunch. After talking to others on the forum I realized I was headed for trouble. One day I watched the female lay eggs on a plant and was to be honest excited. Then I watched the male krib start attacking my diamond tetras. He actually killed one of them and that's when I had to make an emergency move of the tetras to another tank that actually was full of mollies which I keep salt in so I had to move them to another tank empty the tank and refil it all while being stressed that the male krib was killing the other tetras. Finally moved the tetras over and did not feel like going through what pica_nuttalli went through so I called my lfs and they took the kribs from me.

They are awesome fish but I feel they shouldn't be kept in an community tank while they are breeding. To be honest I think they should be kept in a tank by themselves nothing smaller than a 30 gallon and it should be well planted with a lot of caves/pots for hiding places.

I think if you leave the kribs and keyholes together your asking for trouble.

 

[wwestar2000]

You know what. Im getting rid of them. I don't like how aggresive the male is being toward my other fish now and he hasn't even payed attention to the female. I'll return them. So i'll Keep a pair of ballon rams and the keyhole pair. Oh and update... My angels paired so once My cusin sells her guppies there gonna be in a new 30 gallon with a pleco. So now the question is will a keyhole pair and a ballon blue ram pair work in a 20 gallon. The only aggresion right now is from the ram which he is fought back by the dominant male keyhole in my tank but by the other two were ran away from. I suppose cause the keyholes grow larger it will be no problem. And currently no one has even nipped fins and he has been there for 4 days now.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

i'm both sorry and glad to here that wwestar. i was kinda looking forward to having yet one more person sympathize with the soap opera that is kribs breeding. but at the same time, i'd hate to see you lose a member of one of your breeding pairs just because nobody warned you about your kribs. while i'm not sure that i'd even notice one less guppy, losing such a friendly face as a keyhole or blue ram would be devastating. ditto for if i lost my female krib.

but you might not have to get rid of them both... personally, my female has always been quite docile; even when she was gobbling babies, she never fought back to protect herself. i can't think of a single instance that i'm aware of where she hurt anything. you might could try keeping her with either the keyhole or ram breeding pair in the 20g just be prepared to remove her if the pair turns vicious or she gets a little too efficient at stealing fry.

but i'd again, not try mixing two breeding pairs in a 20g. i'd suggest adding the rams to the 30g, but that's also too small to handle breeding angels and, well, anything that isn't armor-plated. i really do think that you mostly need to just pick which two cichlids you want to breed most and either return the third type or set-up another tank. if you just had your heart set on keeping all three pairs, i suggest that you separate either the rams or the keyholes across the two tanks. you'll need to add some tunnels to the 30g for this (think PVC pipes), but that's probably the only way you can handle that many small cichlids at once.

the biggest reason i'm uncomfortable with the thought of having even a single dwarf cichlid in with a breeding pair of angels is that angels are supposed to be far more aggressive than kribs when breeding. Mr. Krib seems to judge whether something has to be kept away from his babies based on its size. For 5 weeks, he beat up the plecos and he's still going strong against the Paradise fish. Angel fry start out smaller, grow slower, are far more numerous, and have more aggressive parents. probably anything over 2 inches is going to be beaten up for three months or so. that's a long time in a 30g where there aren't many places to escape.

 

[wwestar2000]

Well I got rid of the male. I kept the female but put her in my livebearer tank cause she kept getting beat up by the ram. So seems really happy with the livebearer gang. I would hate to lose a albino female krib thats so nice looking. I was scared of her and the female betta but they haven't even payed attention to each other since I put her in and that was yesturday.
Pica- Heres what I came up with. The angels are going into a 30 gallon with a pleco. The pleco will have to be moved. We will let my cusin handle that. So they will be the only ones in there (the pair). The keyholes in the 20 gallon. If the aggression isn't bad enough i will try to keep all 3 in their. These fish are really docile. I mean extremely docile.... way nicer than the ram. So I think with them in the 20 gallon will be 2-3 ballon mollies just to get the 10 gallon less stoked. The guppies could go into the pond with the deformed ones ( I don't have the heart to cull them so they go into a small pond in my garden. And they actaully live.) So then a pair of rams in the 10 gallon. I will try to fit in my cory somewhere cause im scared the rams will be aggresive toward them.
so here it is-
10 gallon-
Pair of ballon rams
20 Gallon-
Keyholes (try 3)
Ballon mollie (3)
female ram
30 Gallon-
Pair of angels.
Oh and i forgot i will probably have to keep the 3rd angel in my 20 gallon for a little while. But I doubt there will be a problem.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

sounds reasonable. i think its probably a good call to have *just* the rams in the 10g, since that's the absolute minimum for them.

the cories could probably handle the angels just fine, especially if you've got some terra cotta pot halves for them to hide under. if your guppies don't have especially long tails, they could probably go into the 30g until such point as the angels begin to pair off. that'd actually be a decent way to measure aggression levels by monitoring for fin-nips. once you start to see chunks missing, you'll know its time to start moving things around.

i think the keyholes and the mollies should do fine in the 20g together. keyholes are supposed to be quite docile, but cichlids being cichlids... fortunately, mollies are reportedly pretty tough cookies themselves. (i'm mostly just guessing on this one not having much experience with either.)

 

[wwestar2000]

I think it's pretty good. Its the least for a pair of regular rams. And balloons are smaller anyway.
Yeah Im probably going to have to put the cory with the angels. The angels are actaully pairing off now. And the only aggresion i see is toward the other angels. Its wierd tough. Both persions(As i like to call them) Are male I think. Are after my marbel. One day one is always next to the marble and if the other gets close he chases him. But the next day the other one is next to the marbel and is chasing the partner of the day before away. And the marble just stays there. Im guessing its a girl cause it got super fat this week. I think it has eggs. And the persions are the same size since i got them. The gupps i will put in the pond. The water is actaully warm. Maybe even warmer than my tanks inside. But they will do just fine. Maybe i will keep my 2 females in with the keyholes.
And i hope there is no problem with the balloon mollies and the keyholes. But i doubt there will be. The keyholes are the nicest cichlid i've seen.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

heh. looks like a lot of people just lost the guessing game... that's really lucky you ended up with both sexes in just 3 angels just be sure to send the third wheel back to the LFS as soon as the pair is finalized.