Holy crap, my fish are breeding! What do I do???

[flynngriff]

WOW!

My gold severum is laying her eggs right now! And my green severum is hovering right beside her, and his belly has turned bright red/orange! He's keeping everyone else in the tank away.

Anyone have any experience with breeding severums? I've never gotten into fish breeding. The tank is full of all different kinds of fish, so they'll most likely be eaten if I don't remove the eggs. How will I know when the eggs are fertilized? She's laid them on a piece of fake driftwood. Can I remove this after they're fertilized, and put it in my 29 gallon? Will this shock and kill the eggs?

Help, I don't know anything about this!

Thanks!!!!

[X-Pande-R]

try this
http://www.desertaquaria.com/content...er/severum.htm

[flynngriff]

That's a very good article. Much better than I had been able to find so far.

What I would like to do now, is to move all my fish from my 29 to my 125, and move the severums and the driftwood with the eggs to my 29. I know it's borderline too small for them, but I don't have any other place I can put them right now. I plan on leaving the adults there with the fry until the fry begin eating, then moving the adults back to the 125. I'm hoping it will be ok to move the eggs into the smaller tank, but I have no idea, nor have I been able to find any advice on moving eggs.

To anyone with good experience breeding cichlids, is this a good idea?

Thanks in advance!

[fishfreaks]

sorry that i cant anwser any of your questions, but i must say congrats and good luck!!

[smartin78]

My Severums have laid eggs 3 times now. I have them with many other fish which you can see in my signature. My first batch were eaten by my loaches. The second batch were laid on a rock. I quickly setup a 10G tank and moved them to that tank. After about 3 days the eggs hatched and I had about 100 wigglers in the tank. A week later if not a little less the wigglers became free swimming. I fed them a diet of BAS. By the time the week were weeded out I had a total of 50 free swimmers. Due to the 10G not being cycled I ended up with 8 baby Severums.

The third time I did not have a tank to move them to so I let the parents do the work. In my 75G community tank they were able to hatch the eggs and keep them for about 2 weeks. It was very interesting to watch them herd them around the tank. It is even more amazing to watch such a large fish suck up a little wiggler into its mouth, swish it around a bit and then spit it back out. I think the fry were snatched up in the night. I feel if I had left the lights on they may have made it. I did have a small night light but I do not think that was big enough.

I can tell they are getting ready to lay eggs again. I still do not have a tank for the fry so what I did was dug a whole in the gravel about 1 foot around. I then lined that hole with large flat rocks that I stood up on there sides. I also put rock that they lay there eggs on in the center of this whole. I then lined the rocks that I stood up around the whole with plants. This was in hopes of giving the Severums there own domain and to make it a little easier to patrol. My poor severums, both mom and dad lost an eye during there first spawn. So keeping an eye on the young ones is quite a task for them.

The idea of making this whole for them came from doing a 75% water change. When I pored in the water I was poring right on the substrate and it dug out a whole. Each time I came back from refilling my bucket the Severums were in the whole.

Good luck with the fry. If you figure anything else out I would love some advice.

SM

[flynngriff]

Great, that's just what I needed to know.

My main concern was moving the eggs before they hatched, since I wasn't sure if this would kill them or not. ****Do you know how long to wait to make sure they're fertilized? ****Right now, I'm just planning on waiting until I see some eggs turn white. ****That way, I should know that any eggs that aren't white should be fertilized. ****Do you think I should move the parents into the smaller tank as well, or just the eggs?

I know I'm going to have to remove the eggs, because I have some very carnivorous fish in that tank. I think the fry would have about as much chance of survival as a snowball in you know where... My only problem now, is that I have a tiny red tail sternella in the small tank, and he wouldn't survive in the big tank either. Looks like a tank divider is in my future.

Thanks very much!!!

[smartin78]

As far as I know the male should fertilize the eggs as soon as the female is done laying them. If you wait to long they may start to hatch on you. Like I said about 3 days tops is all the longer it was before mine hatched. I think a tank divider may be a good idea and I would leave the parents with them but keep a close eye on them from what I have read they can decide to eat them. As I mentioned before it is very entertaining to watch the parents care for the young.

With most dividers I have seen they have small holes to allow for water flow. I am not sure if the holes are big enough for the fry to swim through. I would also be worried about the severums moving the divider. I purchased a tank divide once in the past and if I remember correctly it was very flimsy and if your Severums are anything like mine they love to shove things around the tank. It actually amazes me what they can move. If you do decide to try it let me know how it works. I may try it myself when they have eggs again.

[flynngriff]

Well, the only thing I'll be leaving in my small tank with the is my red tail sternella... He stays in his driftwood the entire time, so he doesn't need much space. I'll probably wedge the tank divider into one side, and angle it so the top is at the edge of the tank, making a little triangle for the red tail. I think this would keep the severums from moving it much. I can also lean the driftwood that the eggs are on onto the divider to help keep it wedged in place. My main concern is actually keeping the red tail away from the fry, since it's a carnivore. I don't think I'll need to leave the parents in there very long, either.

This is the best plan I can come up with... I'll likely drain most of the water out of the small tank, and replace it with water from the large tank. That should keep the parents and fry/eggs from going through too much stress. Luckily, both tanks have been running for years, so I don't have to worry about cycling a new one.

Thanks for the advice everybody, wish me luck!

[flynngriff]

Ok, I have moved the driftwood with the eggs and both severums into my 29 gallon tank. I didn't bother to acclimate them because the tanks have nearly identical water conditions, pH 6.2, 78 degrees. When I first moved them, they lost their breeding colors, and had no interest in the eggs. After about 5 minutes, the color changed back and they began hovering over the eggs again, so I think we're ok.

However, I now have a different problem. The male severum has become very aggresive towards the female... I suspect this is because in the larger tank, he had all the other fish to work out his aggression on by keeping them away from the eggs. Now it's just the two of them, and the tank is much smaller. I don't really fear for her health, because they are both full grown, tough fish, and I've seen her give it as good as she's getting it now.

Here's the question...

Should I remove the male, since he's the aggressive one? Or should I remove the female and let the male stay with the eggs. Or should I remove both, and just let the eggs hatch on their own. Or should I just leave them both in, and let them work it out.

Man, this is exciting. Sorry I just keep babbling on about it...

Thanks again!

[smartin78]

I am not sure how to answer that. If he is not hurting her I would leave them together for 24 hours or so and see what happens. When I moved the eggs on my severums I did not move the parents. For the first 24 hours those 2 fought for aboutt 24 hours. Almost as if they were playing the blame game. ( It's your fault our babies are missing. No its your fault... and so on) Anyway, this behavior stopped after about 24 hours. So it may just take them a bit to calm down after an experience like that. I would say if they have not calmed down after 24 hours or so it may be a good idea to move one or both parents. I am just not sure how seperating a mated pair will affect their relationship or how bad it would stress them out. maybe some one else can answer that for you. I, personally, would rather loose a 100 eggs than a good mated pair.

[flynngriff]

Very true... I won't take any chances with the parents. So far they seem to have calmed down a bit, so I'm probably going to leave them in there together until the eggs hatch. Then I'll move them back to the large tank, and try to raise the fry. If I am successful, I might be offering them up to anyone withing the Atlanta area!

Thanks for all your help.

[smartin78]

Would you beleive it. I was doing some tank maintenance this evening when the my filter screen fell off and to the bottom of the tank it went. Was I little surprised when I reached in to grab it and got attacked by my severum. First he bit me then finned me. They are surprisingly strong. Anyway I thought that he was anusually agressive. After a little looking around I noticed eggs all over a rock next to the screen. Well I guess I will go get a devider and try my luck.

[flynngriff]

Hah!

Congratulations!

I went to my lfs last night, and would you believe someone had traded a pair of severums in last week? And they had hundreds of fry just starting to swim about the bottom of the tank. Must be something in the air... er... water.

Thanks again!

[flynngriff]

Well, my eggs hatched Friday evening. It looked like I had about 100-200 fry wriggling around. The parents seems to not be bothering them when I got home from work, but I looked at them again about a half an hour later, and saw I was down to around 20 left. The parents were eating them. I promptly removed the parents, and put them back in my other tank.

I wasn't really that surprised, or disappointed... 20 fry is much more manageable than 200... Anyway, Friday night I went to sleep with the fry behind a tank divider, keeping my bristlenose and red tail sternella away from them. Saturday morning when I woke up, my bristlenose was on the same side of the divider that my fry used to be on. No more fry. The part that really gets me is that the only way he could have gotten past the divider is to go over the top... More than an inch out of the water! I was pretty surprised...

Thanks again for all the advice, I really appreciate the help. Maybe next time.

[smartin78]

I am sorry to hear that. Would you beleive I still have my fry in my 75G with all those tank mates and no divider. The fry should be free swimming today. This is when things usually get interesting.

Flynngriff, if you wait a couple of weeks then do a large water change that should start your Severums spawning again. Also about them eating them, Since you said you went from 200 to 20 they probably were eating them but be careful. Mine usually look like they are eating them. They constantly pick them up swish them around in their mouth then spit them back out. Usually they are moving them when they do this. Mine have moved the fry 3 times since they have hatched. Each time I thought the fry were all gone but I noticed the Severums fins were still red which is usually a good indicator that the fry are still around. I do remember reading somewhere that they have been known to eat the first batch.

Good Luck

[fish_doc]

Dont forget the soft music and candlelight. The right mood always helps.

Honestly, Dim the lights on the tank. This will help keep the possibility of the eggs molding or getting a fungus lower.

[smartin78]

Wow I did not know that, Thanks.

A question I have regarding the lights is since I am letting them raise the fry in a community tank ( i know that I will probably not get any fry but I have no where to put them and I really like watching the interaction. Surprisingly they allow my silver dollar around them and the SD ignors the fry.) which they do a great job of while the lights are on but once the lights go out is when the trouble starts. I put a night light in the room with the fish but that doesnt seem to be enough. My tank is 75 gallons do you think getting a little florescent light maybe a 12" and setting it on the hood during lights out would be ok.

[flynngriff]

Eh, I'm not really trying to get them to breed... It's not very convenient for me right now, so it's not something I'm pushing for. If it happens, I'll do whatever I can to raise the fry, though.

I did put a flat stone in the 125, in case they do it again, though. This will be a lot easier to manage than the large chunk of driftwood that they used last time. And the driftwood broke, anyway.

Either way I'm not sweating it, but I do want to thank everyone for their help.

[fish_doc]

smartin78 - What do you have for hiding places in the tank. Terra cotta pots, large rocks etc. These can be used to help create territories where the fish can call their own little domains or homes.
Cichlids are fun to breed there are many different types of egglayers.