The Myth Of Pairs

[GShorty1981]

I always read that to get pairs you need to start with 5 juvi unrelated Fish of the same species and let them pair naturally, in my experience, i dump a male and a female of breeding age together and i have eggs inside a week or 2.

I have done this over the years with the following..

Severums....red spotted, gold, turqs, greens, rotkeil, notatus
Angel fish
Convicts (everyone knows this)
Blood Parrots
Flowerhorns
Texas
Yellow Labs
Firemouths
Green Terrors
Blue Acaras (hybrids of Latifrons and Pulchers also)
Socolofi
Zebras
Kribensis
Jewels
Salvini
Red Devils

My Severums were the easiest...

I put a 7" female with a 7" male.....eggs inside a week, there breeding became non stop and the other fish in the tank were getting battered so i sold the female and bought what i thought was another 7" gold male because it had the worm lines on the cheeks like all male Severums except for Severus have....but they were very feint, i had this new Severum 3 days and bang! 1000's of eggs again and the same problem, i got rid of the latest female and got a large Thorichthys of some sort to replace it, the male Sev is still guarding his eggs tho.

SO anyway, its really not that hard to breed most cichlids.

 

[dbanner]

This is very interesting. I have a Thai Silk flowerhorn that is 5 inches total length. I'm yet to get a definite answer on whether its a male or female... This is it...

I also have 2 videos of him/her on my YouTube (dbanner2804). One of which was only taken a few days ago.

He/she is in a 5 foot 450 litre - Jewel Rio 400 (120US gal). It's been in the tank for several weeks. Do you think I could add a male or female (depending on which mine is) and breed them or do you think mine would of made the tank it's own by now? Or is the tank not big enough for a pair?

Thanks

 

[Squidward]

SeverumGS,

I think the idea of trying to find unrelated fish is to prevent inbreeding.
Also, most cichlids are difficult to sex as youngsters, so if you get a group, there is more likeyhood you will get a pair out of the group.

 

[DrRob]

It does indeed work. I've also had adult cichlids kill each other in minutes when placed in a tank together, despite being in good breeding condition and of opposite sexes, which is where the advice to start with juvi's probably stems from. Your method would probably be the method of choice for keen breeders though, otherwise it would be almost impossible to enhance certain characteristics.

 

[GShorty1981]

This is very interesting. I have a Thai Silk flowerhorn that is 5 inches total length. I'm yet to get a definite answer on whether its a male or female... This is it...

I also have 2 videos of him/her on my YouTube (dbanner2804). One of which was only taken a few days ago.

He/she is in a 5 foot 450 litre - Jewel Rio 400 (120US gal). It's been in the tank for several weeks. Do you think I could add a male or female (depending on which mine is) and breed them or do you think mine would of made the tank it's own by now? Or is the tank not big enough for a pair?

Thanks

Looks male to me mate.

 

[dbanner]

Ok thanks. All the other replies iv had have gone in favour of "male" too so looks promising.

Do you think I could add a female or would it be too risky?

 

[GShorty1981]

It worked for me with some ZZ Red Dragons, my Flowerhorns didnt get nasty until they hit about 6-8" yours is deffo fertile tho, red eyes = fertile.

 

[dbanner]

Mine has already taken out a 6 inch jack Dempsey and a 7 1/2 inch buttikoferi... And cleaning his tank is a nightmare lol That's why I'm having my doubts. Just hoping he will take kindly to a female of his own kind

 

[GShorty1981]

He probably wont then, you need to get a separator or he will 'wife beat'.

 

[dbanner]

That what I was afraid of ah well, better to be safe than sorry