Breeding African Butterfly

[nstanley]

Hoping to do it in a 20 gallon tank.

What can anyone tell me abot water levels and how they pair and all that?

 

[wolfsburgfanatic]

first of all, good luck! I'd like to do it myself, but I only seem to find males around here. Try this link, he had a pair spawn IIRC (the page won't come up for me at the moment, but I'm hoping its my internet and the page is still there):

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/breeding/Gallo_Butterflyfish.html



edit: you do mean Pantodon buchholzi and not the butterfly cichlid (Anomalochromis thomasi) correct?

 

[nstanley]

yes patadon and no luck wih the link

 

[wolfsburgfanatic]

Sorry for the dead link, it was a good page. But here's some info if you haven't already seen it...

from http://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/miscellaneous/butterfly.php

Hardness: 8-12° dGH
Ph: 6.5 to 7.0
Temp: 77-82° F (25-28° C)

These fish are rather difficult to breed and peat filtration is recommended. Feed a pair with a large variety of live foods to induce spawning. Once spawning begins, 3 to 7 eggs will be produced at each pass. The eggs will float to the surface where you can use a spoon to transfer them to another aquarium. The pairing will continue for some time with a total of 80 to 200 eggs dropped per day. The eggs will hatch in about 36 hours. The fry are difficult to raise as they will only eat foods that float directly in front of their mouths.

IIRC Joe Gallo recommended dropping the water level for a couple of weeks and then raising it to normal and that helped trigger spawning. I can't remember what he fed the fry though.

Good luck

 

[Pyramid_Party]

Do a google search. Theres a page at aqualandpetsplus that has some details. Ive heard to keep the male and female seperate and plump the female up giving live foods then putting the female in etc.