Well, I don't know what happened with that last post I made, but it was all
messed up -- at least on my BBS -- so I have just deleted it, and am going to post it
again. Here it is:

Yesterday, June 17th, was a very interesting day here in "Malawi
Cichlidland".

As I mentioned in a previous post, due to extreme aggression by the dominant
male, I removed two other male Melanochromis Cyaneorhabdos from the main
tank. This left the dominant male, as well as the "surprise
female" -- which
has now been incubating her eggs for two days -- alone in the tank.

Well, yesterday afternoon, I discovered that the male was really bullying
the female underneath the rocks in the tank. I mean this was continuous,
serious sparring with locked jaws and all. I imagine that he wanted to mate
again, but she didn't want to have anything to do with him.

I was fearful that the female might lose her eggs due to the stress and the
mouth-to-mouth fighting; so, I set up another small tank next to my other
female -- which has also been incubating her eggs for seventeen days now.

I wanted to get the "damsel in distress" out of the tank as quickly as
possible, before she lost her eggs, and I got some unexpected help from the
dominant male. I usually use two nets together in order to catch fish, but
the female wasn't too eager to come out from under her rock -- but then the
male came along and chased her out for me.

I made another happy discovery while I was setting up the second small tank
for this badgered female. To my surprise, even though it was only day #17,
the first female had already released at least one of her fry. I only saw
one, and it was free-swimming already, and it looked rather large for a fry,
at least to me. There may be other free-swimmers, but I didn't see them. The
one that I did see quickly dashed into a small crack between a rock and the
sand substrate. He seemed like a really spunky fellow.

So I decided to test the female to see if she was ready yet to release the
rest of her fry, by putting an algae tablet in her brooding tank to tempt
her. While she nibbled on it a bit, apparently she isn't ready yet to
release the rest of her fry, as I can still see a bulge in her throat.
Perhaps today she will release the rest of them. She is awfully thin and
pale looking, and I want to nurse her back to health as soon as possible.

So, for now, I have two brooding females in two small tanks, two males in
two twenty gallon tanks, and the dominant male alone in the forty gallon
tank. It serves him right for being such a bully to everyone! :)


Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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