Jewel Cichlid help/advice

[cvalenzia]

So I did a water change in my 50gal tank last night as well as vaccumed the tank. Anyhow when I added water it was a bit on the cool side so I figured it would trigger my Jewels to spawn.
Well now for about the past couple weeks the Hemichromis Lifalili and two of my large Hemichromis Guttatus have gotten bright red, which I figure is a sign they are ready to spawn. But now all of a sudden the Lifalili seems to be chasing one of the Guttatus (the lighter pink not as red as the other Guttatus). You can see in the video what I am talking about.
I am wondering if this means the two dark red ones are a pair, and if so what do I do from here? Any help/advice is appreciated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mySraCcyxkk

 

[Avatar]

Maybe

Unless you want hybrids or they're already pair-bonded, you should probably separate them. From my limited experience with Hemis it's hard to keep them from spawning - someone brought me a bag of six guttattas back from the last ECC auction that resulted in three confirmed spawning pairs in a matter of weeks. They are very territorial and keen to assert dominance so males will chase other males, females will chase other females and thus watching to see who tolerates one another's presence is probably a much better indication of who might be a pair than who's chasing whom. Same with most cichlids and it's how I (and others) reliably select pairs out of tanks full of the same species where gender is not otherwise readily apparent, i.e., dominant males generally won't tolerate the proximity of others unless they're females.

Mine have been bright red pretty much continuously since they arrived but they were separated as soon as pairings became obvious so that there's only one pair per tank.

 

[cvalenzia]

So should I take out the Lifalili?

Right now I have 4-1.5" Guttatus, the 2-4" Guttatus, and 1-5" Lifalili in the one tank. I had to take out the other 4" Guttatus because the one other 4" and Lifalili was chasing it. I'm not sure who's a female and who's a male either.

 

[Avatar]

Segregate by sub-species/species to avoid hybrids

A pair should naturally stake out a territory and chase everyone else to the other end of the tank unless the tank is too small and then it will just be perpetual havoc. Pretty sure a pair of these could be spawned in a 15 and maybe even a 10.