Looked at my moms 55 gallon cichlid tank and saw that the rusty was holding. So I wanted to strip her for the eggs. Wanted to strip here for the eggs so i can get practice so if mom or myself gets a "money" fish i can do it properly if she is a bad mom. I went to strip the EGGS and out popped 25 young ones. About the size of the ones that were laid on the 8th of October.
So she was holding for 18 days (give or take) and I never realized it. So does this make me a bad daddy.
Looked at my moms 55 gallon cichlid tank and saw that the rusty was holding. So I wanted to strip her for the eggs. Wanted to strip here for the eggs so i can get practice so if mom or myself gets a "money" fish i can do it properly if she is a bad mom. I went to strip the EGGS and out popped 25 young ones. About the size of the ones that were laid on the 8th of October.
So she was holding for 18 days (give or take) and I never realized it. So does this make me a bad daddy.
IMHO, no! I am against stripping females, unless they are near starvation. All you do is go against nature and at the same time, unless you are extremely careful, you will remove some of the mom's slime coat in the process. It's better to put mom in a seperate tank, like a quarantine tank, that way she isn't afraid to release her young.
In a perfect world - yes, every time a female is holding it would be nice to be able to pull them and put them in their very own 10 gallon tank and let nature take its course. What do you do when you have 20 breeding groups with a dozen females holding at any given time? What do Laif Demason and the other Florida fish farmers do?
No, it's not natural, but neither is confining 20 fish to a 4' long glass box.
