EBR x GBR paired/breeding/eggs

[Laosy Fish]

I have 6 male / 2 female electric blue rams and 5 female german blue rams. 1 male GBR died Lastweek. So far all the GBR females paired with the male EBR. The male EBR wont even look at the femlae EBR. i tried everything but cant get the EBRs to pair togeter. they will only pair with the female GBR. With that said i am mow on my 5th spawn of EBR x GBR. The forst fourbtimes i let the parents raise the fry and all they did was eat them. So this time i decided to pull the eggs and hatch them myself. Im gussing about 10 out of 100 or so eggs have made it to wriggle stage. I transfer the pairs between (2) 30g and a 75g. All tanjs somewhat close to heavily planted with pfs sand. Temp is a steady 87-88 degrees "f".

They are in a 20g with 88 degrees and a sponge filter. I justbadded methelyne blue for fungus as some eggs went white after they were brown with black dots.

Has anyone crossed these two sp.? And if so wht is the outcome in color? Alsodoes anyone have any suggestions on future breding success and advice from this day on for the fry?

Ive bred oddballs bedore but i would say mikrogeophagus is my first cichlid breeding project. Any advice and input or opinions is greatly appreciated. I hope to get pics up but my comp crashed so excuse me for typos since im on the ihpone.

Thanks,
Odie

 

[tjudy]

Hi Odie,

Congrats on breeding the strains. My only advice is to lower the temperature. Rams are not particularly hot-water fish, and you may see more success with fry survival if the temperature is under 80.

There is a breeder in Chicago-land who has been breeding the EBRxEBR with no problems. I have not heard if they breed true or not. Since most fish are visual communicators, it does not surprise me that your male rams are picking wild-type blue rams as mates. They are genetically inclined to prefer those color patterns. However, I suspect that if you removed the wild-type females the EBR males would pair with EBR females... any port in a storm!

 

[Laosy Fish]

Hi Odie,

Congrats on breeding the strains. My only advice is to lower the temperature. Rams are not particularly hot-water fish, and you may see more success with fry survival if the temperature is under 80.

There is a breeder in Chicago-land who has been breeding the EBRxEBR with no problems. I have not heard if they breed true or not. Since most fish are visual communicators, it does not surprise me that your male rams are picking wild-type blue rams as mates. They are genetically inclined to prefer those color patterns. However, I suspect that if you removed the wild-type females the EBR males would pair with EBR females... any port in a storm!

Hey thanjs for some inputs...

I was told rams are hot water cichlids that prefer temps of 82-88 degr. I have hatched flowerhorns ( dont consider them cichlids) at high temps of 88 with tons of success. But i di have another pair of ebr x gbr about to lay eggs and the first pair that laids the eggs im talking about are almost ready for spawn number 6!!! It is true that once they start they breed like clockwork and the eggs seem to increase with each spawn.

I tried to pair the ebr together when i first got them and all the males did was beat the ebr females so bad that they were hiding at the top of a leaf of one of my oriental swords. As soo as i added the fenale gbr the male ebr paired up befire i could even get the female gbr out of the baggs.

I had bought 5 "wild" females but i only believe one is wild considering all but one have tons of color and look like tanks raised. The lone "wild" female has less color and almost looks all yellow. I hope to get pics up to share them.

Forgot to mention that with each spawn they spawmed on a leaf not in a ditch or flat rock. Had anyone had an experience of spawning on a leaf? It seems that this is the spot that they are all fighting for.

You wouldnt happen to jnow who the breeder is in chicago would you? Ironically i live in the windy city area also. Welk chicago burbs.

So you guys think i should "lowr" the temp for the fry?

Should i also lower the temps on the breeder tanks also?

Does anyone know or have an idea as to wht these fry would look like? Any guesses or theories?

Should i lower thevpair numbers in the 30g? Right now there is 2-3 pairs in each tank. They all have paired and pocked spots to breed. Plenty of plants and flat rocks for privacy. I think i might of mentioned PFS as my substrate with little pebbles for. The tank that theybseem to be breeding in has half pebbles and half PFS. The other tanks have jus PFS. All the water paramtets and temps are the same in every tank.

I have breed aros, endlis, and datniodes before. I thought thise were hard to breed. Actually they were harder to breed but easier to raise the fry. Rams seem like it is easier to breed them but harder to raise fry. Hope that make sense. Im kinda kost here with the cichlids and doing my vest to take past experience of other sp. And imply it to these little guys. So again thanks for your inputs and more input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Odie

 

[tjudy]

aro = arrowanna? What kind and how big is the tank you keep them in?

endli - Polypterus enlicheri? Very cool. I would like to hear more about that.

datnoids - which one? Are they egg scatterers or do they spawn like a cichlid?

 

[Laosy Fish]

aro = arrowanna? What kind and how big is the tank you keep them in?

endli - Polypterus enlicheri? Very cool. I would like to hear more about that.

datnoids - which one? Are they egg scatterers or do they spawn like a cichlid?

Yes arowana. Just silvers though...

And yes poly endlis. I wish congo endlis. That would have been better.

"we" bred indo dats jus once and ntt dats twice. Dont know if they were spawners or eggs scatteres. They spawned in abig arse pond. They are not mouth brooders like the arows. The ntt fry were the only aurvivors. We have been trying with CT dats for 20+years with no success.

 

[Laosy Fish]

Update...

Forgot to aldo mention that it is day 3. The fry arevhalf wiggling and half free swimmig. I guess i mean te they are in the "flip flop" stage where they are almost free swimming. My guess is that by tomorrow they should all be almost free swimming. I still count an even ten fry. So no more fatalities yet.

I just checked in the breeding tanks and sure enough a pair is cleaning a rock and pit behind the oriental swirds in the front right cirner of the tank. Im guessing within the hour another spawn shoild happen. The pair is an ebr male and the lone "wild" gbr female. So this should be an interesting batch. This would be their first time spawnimg. Im debating on wehter i should rause the fry myself or jus let nature take its course. Any suggestions?

Also i expermented again with a ebr male and ebr female in a 20g long and all the male did was "ram" te female ebr till she is hiding in on top of a leaf again. Any suggrstions here on getting them to pair? Should i add more ebr males and more ebr females?

 

[Laosy Fish]

Nighty update

Well the fry are doing the free swim dance so thats a good sign...

I checked on the pair that was cleaning and my guess of them spawning within the hour was correct. They laid eggs and the eggs are brown. Yay!!! ive come yo terms anf willing to take the chance and risk the eggs and let them sit overnight. If i see more than half missing by the AM yhen ill seperate them from the parents. Should i keep both parents with the eggs or jus one or nome? If one of the parents which one should i keep with the eggs?

 

[Laosy Fish]

A little help please...

I jus joined this site and started this thread in hopes of advice and suggestions. I thought what i stumbled upon would be interesting and hope all that reads this can benefit or add on to this information. All opinions and suggrstions are welcomed!


I was told that apistogramma.com was where the experts hang out and where i can get the best advice. So please reply to my post with some knowledge.

Thanks,
Odie

 

[Laosy Fish]

Morning update

So last night i found another batch of eggs in the front left corner of the tank. They were layed in a pit. I decided to take thise eggs out and leave the ones that were laid by the wild female and an EBR male. They seem to be gaurding the eggs and taking great care of them. The male constantly fans the eggs and is eating jus the bad ones. This is their first spawn as a pair so ill let them raise it first....

Im starting to run out of room and was going to try and keep the bqtches seperately. But last night i cam to realize that i currently have well over 1k eggs and counting. So smixture is inevitable.

Im going to start culling the bad batches soon as my datnioides appreciate live food.

Anyone have any suggestions? I still cant get my female EBR to pair with my Male EbR.

 

[ed seeley]

Sounds like you will have to remove the normal ram females to get the males interested in the blue ones. Well done on all the eggs though. If you're running short of space maybe you could leave the eggs with the parents. After a couple of goes they may well get the hang of parenting and it'll cut down your workload dramatically!

 

[tjudy]

Most dwarf cichlids have to learn to be good parents, and this is more true with tank-bred tank strains than wilds or even wild type (in my experience). If you want fish that raise their own fry (a great space saver), let them fail a couple times and eventually they will figure it out.

Rams form pretty strong pairs, so if you separate the EBR males from their wild type mates, keep them alone for a couple weeks before introducing EBR females. The time off will break the bond the male is under and he will be more receptive to the EBR females.

 

[electric eel]

i have some ebr x ebr fry that are 3/8s of an inch long now but as of yet have'nt crossed them with any others so i don't know what the fry would look like.i've had pairs that i have let try 7 or 8 times on their own that never "get it right" they will often get them freeswimming but usually end up eating them.i just had a new gold pair eat a whole spawn.i've found if you leave their light on 24/7 until the fry are freeswimming it can help alot(they sometimes get startled when the lights come on and eat the wigglers or fry-even with a night light) also if you have tanks next to them that they can see the other fish. if they think the other fish are going to eat the fry they will eat them-put cardboard between the tanks so they can't see each other.in cichlid atlas 2 Dr.Roemer says that the areas where rams come from are fairly open and that the water gets exposed to a lot of sun so it is pretty warm.also he says typically their are'nt a lot of other fish present so rams have'nt had to evolve the level of parental care that apisto's have and i'm guessing are comparitively poor parents even in the wild.this has probably been even more agravated by inbreeding in aquaria.meth.blue is a terrible antibacterial(it is'nt recognized by the ama as even being a bactracide)it enhances hemiglobin uptake and this is the benefit of meth. blue.bacteria kills the eggs and then comes the fungus(which will then spread to healthy eggs)i've had sucess using one drop of meth.blue and one drop acriflavine per gallon of water(DO NOT use acriflavine on adult fish-it can cause sterility) but lately have had better luck using alder cones instead of chemicals.the upside and downside of a higher temp in your hatching jug is that everything is accelerated.the eggs hatch and the fry freeswim faster but bacteria and all the nasty stuff also reproduce much more quickly.i like to use clean water within +or- 1degree fahrenheit of the water in the parents tank.i shock a gallon of water with 10 drops of 30% pure hydrogen peroxide(its nontoxic) and then add either my chemicals or the alder cones(i still use 1 drop meth. blue) all this is not always necessary but i have done strains of angels that this was the only way i was able to get fry sucessfully.hope there is some useful info here.

 

[Laosy Fish]

Update

So i lost track of days. Was doing my best but its starting to get out of hand.

I have free swimmers and its seems that putting the eggs was a good as idea as the eggs provide some food for the fry. Kinds wokrs out and its like the fry are better parents than their own. They actually eat the bad eggs. Lol

Checked the breeder tank this morning and sure enough, another batch of eggs. Same tank as the wild femAle GBR and male GBR pair. The wild paur (thats wat i call them) seem to he somewhat good parents. The eggs made it through day two and half of the eggs turned white. The male and female gaurd the eggs constantly and the only time they leave the eggs is during feeding time. Which they take turns gaurding and eating. This morning i noticed they moved the eggs into a pit that they dug next to the round rock that tue eggs were on. They left the white eggs on tye rock and only transfered the brown eggs. Not sure if i mentioned but this is their first spawn and i hope the next ones get better. Seems luke i found a pair that is capable of raising their ownfry. Im debating if i should move their tank mates which is another pair of eBR xGBR. 30g tank with half PFS and half pebbles. Temp is 88. This is my succesfull tank with a high ratio of spawns. What do you guys think?

I now have well over 1k in eggs and fry. And the numbers are increasing with each spawn..

I experimented eith the female EBR and 2 male EBR last night in another 30g. Well lets jus say that was a bad idea. The males dispose of her. They beat her badly and she didnt make it to he morning. So now i have no female EBR. So my breeding project of EBR x EBR will have to wait till i get a female. So if anyone has a few or no anyone that has some for sale, please let me know...

Thanks and ill keep some more updates goind.

EEL, thanks for the info. Very helpfull and interesting. How are your EBR fry doing? And are the pairs coming around in learning to parent? I know you mentioned it was almost 7 spawns before they got it right. Im in the same boat. Almost 6 spawns and still eating fry. Ill try he light thing and see if that works on one of the tanks.

 

[electric eel]

you misunderstood me.i have set up many pairs.the pair i was refering to was one in the past.i moved the ebr fry to another tank last night and 2 died.this only leaves 18.i had to put my spare male back into the tank with them and have'nt gotten any more fry since.got another ebr female and am going to try to get her set up with the other male today or tomorrow.i was able to get fry from the ebr pair on the 2nd spawn they had.i let them get them freeswimming and imediately sucked them out with a 12" piece of 1/4" rigid tubing connected to a couple of feet long piece of airline.there were 60 fry(i counted them with an eyedropper) i goofed around and lost 40.i have so many koi angelfish fry i'm taking care of that i struggle to keep up.the ebr's are much more valuable but i have been trying to produce some nice high coverage orange koi angels off and on for 5 years.right now the culmination of this goal is my top priority-not making money.the "eggs" your fish moved are probably wigglers.i have never had any move eggs but they frequently move the wigglers.the first pair i did(in a densely planted tank) would move them every time i figured out where they were.sounds like you are doing well.these are not easy fish.i have talked to many really experienced breeders that had done rams in the past that struggled with them when they revisited breeding them and really could'nt figure out definitvely what they were doing wrong.i think it has a lot to do with the ram's themselves.if you can get stock that is locally tankraised they are almost always easier to deal with then the ones that come from the florida fishfarms or asia.i want to set up some ebr's with some of my longfinned blues(the store i got them from has one ebr male that needs a home) whether or not i get around to it is another matter.next time before you just put the ebr's together it might help if you could put 2-10gallon tanks next to each other and put the male in one and the female in the other so they can see each other.condition them with some live food for maybe a week and then put them together.

 

[Laosy Fish]

EEL.....

Hope your koi turn out. Id like to get some.

I thought about that eith the 10g tanks next to eatch other. When i watched it last night i almost nut a dividwr in there but my dividr has hole that they can slip through i did it with fh and i knew i should of did it with the rams. Oh well lesson leaened.

Dont know what im doing right or wrong but it seems the pairs like the tanks and water. I guess im just getting lucky. Like i said before it seems they are easy to breed just raising the fry is hard. Its nice to get ebr to breed with gnr but my maim goal is the same as yours. Culmination of the EBr...

Thanks again and i hope your future ebr pairs can breed!!

 

[Laosy Fish]

well i cant seem to find where the pair hid the fry. I thought they had moved them to the pit next to the rock where they spawned but i see no free swimmers or eggs. I gonna assume they pair ate the fry. Oh well ill wait for spawn number 2.

I managed to get myself a female EBR last night. Just one though but hey i cant complain...so ehat i did was put her in a 10g between 2 males that are in their own 10g. I have them set next to each so i can see which male she prefers. Ill let this go for about a week and see if they pair up. Thanks EEL for this and im gonna go the same route i always have with othe fish in getting them to pair up. If it worked for me in other breeding projects it might work for me with the rams. I didnt think breeding rams would almost be luke breeding oddbals and predatory frish. But hey nature will take its course and i hope the female is fertile.


As for the fry that are free swimmin now. They are eating constantly and groomed the eggs that i add which are a week younger. Like i said in my last post it seems like the fry are better parents than the parents. Lol starting to get wrigglers and it looks like another nice ratio of eggs making it past hactching stage.

I currently have eggs and fry in 2 seperate tanks. One with meth blue and the other without it. So far i see no dufference in hatching and survival rate. I have raised fry before with just tap water with no conditioner or any chemicals and had no problems. Could just be the water i have. I think im gonna go that route. Jus wanted to experimejt with the meth blue since ive never used it before. But from what i here meth blue has more cins than pros.

No more spawns yet but i do see anotjer pair dancing behind a sword. Which is nice since this is the last pair that has not spawned yet. If they do spawn than i would have had all my pairs succesfully spawned. Now to get them to be good parents.

You guys think i should take the fry out and put them in a bare bottome tank with both parents or just one of the parents? If so which parent should i keep with te fry? As in which parent is the better at raising fry (male or female)? Im thinking this might have a better chance for the fry ad the parents to bond and nit feel threatened to eat their own fry.


Thanks,
Odie

 

[tjudy]

You guys think i should take the fry out and put them in a bare bottome tank with both parents or just one of the parents? If so which parent should i keep with te fry? As in which parent is the better at raising fry (male or female)? Im thinking this might have a better chance for the fry ad the parents to bond and nit feel threatened to eat their own fry.

If the fry are free swimming they can fend for themselves so long as there are no other fish to eat them. Go small... when I remove new fry I put them into a plastic dish fro a few days or a 2.5 gallon tank. Slow filtration or just an airstone. Smaller space allows you to feed less and still have good food density for the fry to find. Bare bottom is the way to go.

 

[electric eel]

hi odie,i honestly have never had a male ram kill a female.they just usually are'nt that aggressive.i had one that beat his mate up pretty bad and i thought he was going to kill her(at the time i really did'nt care) but when the fry freeswam she turned around and kept him behind the sponge filter for a week.they went on to spawn harmoniously for a while after that.the 10 gal tanks were just a thought a divider might be better.if there is much size difference between your fry the bigger ones will almost certainly eat the smaller so i'm not sure using them for surrogate parents is a good idea.the 2 ebr males have been chasing the one female but there are enough plants and cover she has no problems evading them.the aca messed me up on the last batch of ebr fry as they freeswam 4 days before the aca.i came home and fed them once and put some algae in there for the fry to pick on but it was just too long for fry that small to go without some bbs or something so i lost a bunch of them.luckily not all.this batch of koi have some that are around 75% orange and almost no black(some none at all).i will pick breeders out of them so i'm still one generation away(hopefully)i'm guessing i should be able to get some of them to spawn in 4 months or so.so i should know what they are producing in maybe 6 months give or take.

i just talked to my buddy at the pet shop,odie.he said he just tried to pair up an ebr male with an ebr female.came in the next day and he said the male had shredded the females fins and he had to take the male out and put it in a tank by itself(it attacked the others when he put it with them) maybe they are like black angelfish maybe extra aggression came along with the electric blue trait.

 

[Laosy Fish]

Eel-

As i watch them when i had the gbr male and it seemed like the ebr males were more aggressive than the gbr males. Could be that the gbr male was wuld and a little more laid back or maybe the ebr are lile the strains of FH. Maybe the inbred, line breeding, and crossbreedin brings out more of tye aggressive traits. Who knows but i do notice the ebr males hve no discrestion when it comes to "ramming". I notice tey chase other female GBR that is not their pair pretty aggressively. The action is Kinda cool IMO....

Well my egg crate dividers holes are to big for the rams which they can swim freey from ine side if the divider ti thep other. I tried it on the last female that i had and all it did was scratch them pretty bad. I devided to go with the 10g tanks cause thats qhat i did with FH and betta fish. Which worked almost 99% if the time they aldways paired. Ill keep you updated... Any suggestions on a divider that they cant awim thriugh? Ive ojly used egg crates...

As for big fry eats small fry.. Well i thought about that alot and how far it will go before all the big ones eat the little ones. I'm thinking of seperation as tue free swimmers get bigger but atleast they are provided with food and helping me keep the fry population down. Lol sounds mean but big fish eats little fish...

I fed my titanium FH frys to my jar when i couldnt sell them. Some thought it was wrong of me, but when they are not quality or got beat up and wont be quality then using them as feeders is a good option. IMO

Tjudy-

I gues i should of mentioned that the water is not filled all the way in tye 30g tank with the fry in them. It is only fill 30%. i did the same thing with the frys of other sp. Gotta love them when they are that small. I use to do smaleer tanks but the upkeep on them is something my back or hip doesnt allow me to keep up with. And with 2 toddlers time is not on my side. Couple of the reasons i got out of the hobby and sold all my big boys.


Ill keep you posted and thanks again for the posts!!!

 

[electric eel]

i'm guessing that maybe the ebr females are'nt ready to spawn and the males are so they get testy.its possible that maybe some or a lot of the ebr females are sterile.they have'nt been around long enough for anyone to really know how fertile they are.i have a mixed tank of long finned and shortfinned gbr and the 3 or so pairs of long fins that have formed in there have been long fin to long fin(much to my surprise) so i don't think they are visually stimulated to choose mates with a wild type appearance.who knows what motivates them.most of the females in that tank(approx. 10) had their papilai out(when the pairs were forming) so they were all "ready to go" eggcrating is mostly all i've used for a divider.have used the store bought ones(with angels) a couple times but the only way i got them to stay in place securely was to silicone the black plastic bars that hold them to the glass of the aquarium.