Post by Tempest Peacock on Jan 16, 2011 10:22:57 GMT
I have kept a few species of Mbuna and found them all extremely easy to breed given certain conditions.
To breed mbuna just follow a few simple steps:
1) provide an aquarium of adequate size and with a high amount of filtration and water movement.
2) introduce your mbuna with a ratio of at least two females to one male, unless you're introducing a large group of at least ten (such as with Demasoni) then the sex ratio does not matter so much.
3) Keep up regular water changes and give them a spirulina-rich diet.
4) Wait.
After a surprisingly short time (many mbuna breed in the LFS after being in those cramped and imperfect conditions for a few days) you will find females with mouths full of eggs.
How you deal with the egg-carrying females is up to you. If you want to you can seperate the female from the others either in a seperate small tank or into a breeding net. Personally I leave the female in the tank until she's been holding the eggs for about two weeks - by which time they will have hatched and be free-swimming fry - then I strip her (holding her gently in my hand, while carefully massaging her throat) over a fry net stuck to the inside of the tank. The young are ejected into the net and the female can go straight back into the tank.
The only problem I have had is some fish will try to eat the fry through the fry net. This oftens results in the fry being killed. There are solutions. I have put the fry net within a larger one, creating a buffer zone.
Or you can create a hard case using a tupperware container of the right size (or margerine tub, anything really that can be washed perfectly clean). I then use a fork heated on the hob to punch many holes in the plastic, and cut other holes to allow it to slide around the fry net, protecting it from predatory adults.
Mbuna fry can live on crushed flake and pellet, or you can use specialised foods bought from LFS or eBay.
Soon, you'll have a tank full of babies. In fact, if you don't collect the babies chances are you'll end up with a few surviving in the cracks in the rocks, but the method above will give you many more - so many that people find it commercially viable to breed their own mbuna, and you will find the web littered with mbuna breeders.
The challenge in mbuna keeping - and where the conservation comes in - is to find, keep and breed the rarer species or location-types. Finding these fish, breeding them, and spreading them throughout the hobby is a duty. There's no risk of the Red Zebra cichlid going extinct - lets make that the case for all the mbuna species.
To breed mbuna just follow a few simple steps:
1) provide an aquarium of adequate size and with a high amount of filtration and water movement.
2) introduce your mbuna with a ratio of at least two females to one male, unless you're introducing a large group of at least ten (such as with Demasoni) then the sex ratio does not matter so much.
3) Keep up regular water changes and give them a spirulina-rich diet.
4) Wait.
After a surprisingly short time (many mbuna breed in the LFS after being in those cramped and imperfect conditions for a few days) you will find females with mouths full of eggs.
How you deal with the egg-carrying females is up to you. If you want to you can seperate the female from the others either in a seperate small tank or into a breeding net. Personally I leave the female in the tank until she's been holding the eggs for about two weeks - by which time they will have hatched and be free-swimming fry - then I strip her (holding her gently in my hand, while carefully massaging her throat) over a fry net stuck to the inside of the tank. The young are ejected into the net and the female can go straight back into the tank.
The only problem I have had is some fish will try to eat the fry through the fry net. This oftens results in the fry being killed. There are solutions. I have put the fry net within a larger one, creating a buffer zone.
Or you can create a hard case using a tupperware container of the right size (or margerine tub, anything really that can be washed perfectly clean). I then use a fork heated on the hob to punch many holes in the plastic, and cut other holes to allow it to slide around the fry net, protecting it from predatory adults.
Mbuna fry can live on crushed flake and pellet, or you can use specialised foods bought from LFS or eBay.
Soon, you'll have a tank full of babies. In fact, if you don't collect the babies chances are you'll end up with a few surviving in the cracks in the rocks, but the method above will give you many more - so many that people find it commercially viable to breed their own mbuna, and you will find the web littered with mbuna breeders.
The challenge in mbuna keeping - and where the conservation comes in - is to find, keep and breed the rarer species or location-types. Finding these fish, breeding them, and spreading them throughout the hobby is a duty. There's no risk of the Red Zebra cichlid going extinct - lets make that the case for all the mbuna species.