Do male or femal cichlids hold the eggs in the mouth?

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Flipmikeskater3

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My girl friend is in an argument with another person about who holds the eggs, my girl friend says females do (which I've always thought too)
But the other girl says the males do and aparently she has been breeding them for 3 years and this is the first time ours have bred.

So I'm asking the real experts do the male or female lake Malawi mbuna hold the eggs?
Thanks lol
 
Thank you just as I thought, and I have my first holding Cichlid! I have it in its own tank, should I try to strip it or just let her be?
 
Flipmikeskater3 said:
Thank you just as I thought, and I have my first holding Cichlid! I have it in its own tank, should I try to strip it or just let her be?

It depends on what your plans are

If you want to keep all of them so that you can sell them or what have you then remove her into a smaller tank until she spits then put her back and have a tank full of fry.

Or

Leave them in there and let nature run its course and the strong survive and establish their spot in the community.

But neither one is a sure bet that all of them will survive. If something goes wrong in the fry tank with the water perimeters then they could all potentially die or if you don't have enough hiding spots in your established tank then they become too exposed and a snack for other fish.
 
Cecil2010 said:
It depends on what your plans are

If you want to keep all of them so that you can sell them or what have you then remove her into a smaller tank until she spits then put her back and have a tank full of fry.

Or

Leave them in there and let nature run its course and the strong survive and establish their spot in the community.

But neither one is a sure bet that all of them will survive. If something goes wrong in the fry tank with the water perimeters then they could all potentially die or if you don't have enough hiding spots in your established tank then they become too exposed and a snack for other fish.

Well I would like to keep as many as possible don't want to sell them because they are hybrids between yellow lab an albino red zebra.
I have her in her own tank right now should I wait till she spits or strip her?
 
If they are hybrids then I would put her back in the tank and let what happens happen you might get 2 or 3 in the end that make it
 
I would like the max to survive so I can put some back in my original tank, or give a few to a friend whose has been wanting to start a mbuna tank, or I could always use them as feeders for my sa/ca cichlids

What do you think the hybrids will look like?
 
Im pretty sure they cant, what you
Buy is what you get... At least with the ones ive had, which are basically common species because i was unemployed at the time and couldn afford anything too fancy :p
 
I am currently reading a book, The Cichlid Fishes by G.Barlow, that describes sexual plasticity in certain species of Cichlids like that of Etropus maculatus and Cichlasoma citranellum, i.e females and males were able to change sex when surrounded by same sex in order to reproduce. No mention was made of Mbuna, but that is not to say it cannot happen but it may not have been observed and documented. Interesting reading.
 
What do you think the hybrids will look like?

Depends on what type of species the "albino zebra" is (the fry are not likely to be albino, unless the yellow lab also carries that recessive trait).

Red zebra x yellow lab crosses look like a mix of both species. More yellow than red zebra's but more orange than yellow labs. They may have some light striping and lack the black fin markings that the yellow labs have.

The mouth structure (and dental pattern) will be different from that of the parents (zebra mouths are structured for algae-grazing, yellow lab mouths are structured for capturing small aquatic crustaceans).

Most m. estherae x l. caeruleus hybrids look like this:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/CichlidPIX/100_0128.jpg%20yel%20lab%20not.jpg

but since most of the "albino zebras" I've come across are albino metriaclima greshakei (non-albino "ice blue zebra's" which are light blue with red dorsal and caudal fins, but start off a drab brown), there's may be no telling what yellow lab x ice blue zebra progeny will look like.

Temperment-wise zebra x lab hybrids are apt to be more aggressive than the generally mildy aggressive labs yet less aggressive than zebra's.

This hybrid will be prone to breed with any zebra, lab or zebra-lab hybrid in the tank. If you ever plan to breed zebra's or yellow labs (which are more desirable to hobbyists than mbuna hybrids will ever be) then their presence in the tank will definately throw a monkey wrench into that effort.

...give a few to a friend whose has been wanting to start a mbuna tank...

The dissemination of hybrids is usually frowned upon in the hobby.
 
The female spit the babies!
 

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