Amazing Cichlid parental care

[Ruck Fules]

The fry is from my gorillus blue umbee pair on the left side but some decided to swim to my rio Magdalena pair on the right side. Both pairs share parental care now and are very protective as seen on the video. The predatory urge has been suppressed by parental instinct.


http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZICtmQOpLic


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[Dispatch273]

That is really neat! Do they always co-parent like that?

 

[doomiedee]

That's pretty cool. Atleast you won't need to worry about losing fry.


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[Ruck Fules]

Funny thing is when my rio mag pair had fry and it went to the other side, fry became food lol. The pair was really young at that time so that might explain why they ate the rio mag fry.


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[tiger15]

Co-parenting has been reported by big tank owners. In a big tank environment, multiple pairs have room to breed at the same time. The fry from different parents, even of different species, often comingle and the parents are not smart enough to tell them apart, and will jointly protect them. I heard that it can also happen in the wild too.

 

[RampageRR]

I remember reading about someone who had 2 dovii pairs who had set up territories on either side of a huge tank, and basically would co-parent in this same way. Really cool behavior, I hope to see this for myself some time.

 

[ryeguy28]

that is really cool

 

[BlesOne]

Thats awesome, I have a mixed magx / Gorillus black batch of fry less 3/4 in a 54 grow out. I can't tell them apart at all, maybe in a few months I guess lol.




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[tomomothy]

Co-parenting has been reported by big tank owners. In a big tank environment, multiple pairs have room to breed at the same time. The fry from different parents, even of different species, often comingle and the parents are not smart enough to tell them apart, and will jointly protect them. I heard that it can also happen in the wild too.

That explains what happens when 2 or more sets of parents are breeding at the same time, but for cichlids to protect fry even when they arent breeding at all that speaks to a different personality modifier. I think its really interesting that the parenting instinct takes over for fish that arent currently parents. Often times animals of all sorts kill juvis to eliminate future competition

 

[darth pike]

The weirdest tale I've read was the office tank of Dr. Wayne Leibel ... he had dovii breeding on one side, and a pair of pike cichlids that had never bred on the other. The pikes actually 'stole' the fry through the divider and raised them.