Rainbow cichlids putting babies in roots of java fern

[mchambers]

My rainbow pair spawned last weekend. Tonight, I was trying to figure out what had happened to the fry. After a few minutes, I realized they were in the roots of a floating piece of java fern. The parents were guarding them there and were very suspicious of me and my iPhone. I'll see if I can post video later.

 

[jonclark96]

Very cool. Get pics if you can.

I had a pair of archocentrus centrarchus that would hang their wigglers in the plastic plants in the tank instead of putting them in a bit in the substrate. It's pretty amazing the instincts that our tank raised fish keep from their wild ancestors.

 

[hollyfish2000]

I had mine put their wrigglers up on high on roots of floating wisteria. Such good parents!!

 

[mchambers]

What happened to the Youtube icon?

Here's a link to the video. I have no idea how to embed it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVohoCpWWfw

 

[hollyfish2000]

I miss my rainbows:wub:

 

[mchambers]

Well, I'm going out of town tomorrow for the long weekend, so I don't know if any will survive, but if they do, I'd be happy to give you some babies!

 

[dogofwar]

I've got the ones from you as well, Holly, so if you'd ever like them back...

I never get tired of watching cichlid parents care for their young...with each kind taking a slightly different approach.

If you haven't kept and successfully bred rainbow cichlids (or other New World cichlids) before, give them a try.

Matt

 

[mchambers]

Embedded video

Guess the Youtube button doesn't show if you do a quick reply.

The plant roots with the babies is more or less in the middle of the picture. The mother is patrolling in the foreground, thinking that my iPhone is there to steal her babies. The dad is tending to the babies in the background.

[YT]RVohoCpWWfw[/YT]

 

[hollyfish2000]

No, I can't deal with all the babies surviving. Otherwise I'd never have gotten rid of my last pair. Right now I have an explosion of albino long-finned BNs and assassin snails, but both are easier to deal with

 

[mchambers]

A possible explanation -- "wriggler hanging"

Interesting explanation, although I don't think my tank has low oxygen levels. I like the term "wriggler hanging," however.

http://www.howfishbehave.ca/pdf/oxygen.pdf

A peculiar behaviour has been documented in one species of cichlid, the rainbow cichlid ​

Herotilapia multispinosa. Working in the lab of Miles Keenleyside at the University of Western Ontario, Simon Courtenay exposed parental rainbows to oxygen concentrations of only 2 ppm. When the eggs hatched, the parents did not gather the emerging wrigglers into pits dug in gravel as usual. Instead they sucked the wrigglers into their mouth and spat them into vegetation, onto which the wrigglers attached themselves thanks to glue-producing glands on their head. Courtenay showed that this behaviour, called wriggler-hanging, was more prevalent when oxygen concentration was low. Presumably, wrigglers benefited from being close to vegetation because of the oxygen released by photosynthesis and also because the plants were often closer to the surface. Wriggler-hanging has also been reported in other cichlids, such as the angelfish, the red discus, the severum and the festivum.​

 

[mchambers]

Update: Lots of Free Swimmers

Came from a long weekend away and found that the fry are now free swimmers! So far, it looks like they're doing quite well. The parents are doing a good job, and the other tank inhabitants are staying away.