frempongi looking for love

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lostnight

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 27, 2006
690
9
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59
Dayton, Ohio, USA
Last year I got 6-8 Hemichromis frempongis, now I'm down to two. They seem to enjoy murdering each other. The two remaining ones each have their own aquariums, one know is a male. The other one might be a female. It is considerably smaller. I thought she was gone and dead, I couldn't find her for weeks. Then one day I was moving stuff around in the aquarium she came out of a decorative log, very skinny and beatup. She looks much better now, put on weight, her fins are growing back, they're not all the way back yet, but she's doing well.

I am ordering some more fish this Monday morning from TUIC, and I have to decide whether or not to try getting more frempongis. I would love to get a breeding pair, but I'm kind of discouraged by my lack of success from my last batch. I might try putting the two remaining frempongis together this weekend before I place my order. I just want to see if they have any chance of hooking up.

Here is the male:

frempongi10-20-07003.jpg
 
Yeah, I'm thinking about that. I have lot's of time to watch them, I am home on vacation until October 30th.

Here is the female in a different (well, might be a female) aquarium

frempongi10-20-07001.jpg
 
No, each one is alone in a seperate aquarium. Neither of these individuals play nice with other species. They both have kills racked up. But they don't get that huge, and mine haven't been in an aquarium that large. They might play nicer in a 180 than a 75, especially with CAs larger than them.
 
My lifelong favorite football team Pitt was on ESPN Game plan against the Cincinnati Bearcats. The game came on at 12:00 noon local time. For a while, it wasn't going so well for Pitt, so about 2:00pm, to get my mind off the game, I turnred my attention more towards my aquariums. I was still following the game, and I already had things planned out what I wanted to do aquarium wise. So around 2:00, I moved my male frempongi into my female(?) frempongi's aquarium. (I will post the female as female(?) until she shows me she's a female).

They battle started almost instantly, and I felt my stomach twisting, I felt the fermale{?} was overmatched and would be killed quickly. But I also know battles are sometimes done before spawning as a sort of courtship test, so I let them do their thing. The female(?) put up a suprisingly game fight, so I most have done something right bringing her back to good health.

frempongi10-20-07004.jpg
 
After about a 20 minute fierce battle, the male seemed to have won and chased the female(?), but just a little bit. The female(?) put up a more intense battle than expected. She hid behind a plant while he tried to catch his breath. I left home about 3:30pm until 9:30pm to watch football with my friends at the local sports bar. I was afraid to come home and see the female(?) dead or battered, but surprisngly, she was hanging out with the tired looking male, even nudging him a little.

I just looked in on them again, they are both tired, but hanging out together. I'm not yet sure if they're hanging out with each other because:

a) they want to mate

b) they want to kill each other, but they are too worn out to finish the job at the moment

I turned the light off for the night. I hope I get proof on Sunday that they are a pair, otherwise, I might order some more frempongis.
 
As it turns out, I was wrong about who won the fight. The male looked like he won, but the battle took too much out of him. He was exhausted. I thought the female(?) was hanging out with him to get him to breed, but he was unresponsive. Then later on she was attacking him. His pectoral fins got torn up, and he didn't try too hard to escape her beatings. I put him back in his own aquarium, this certainly wasn't the outcome I expected.

I'll hold off on getting more frempongis when I make my TUIC order this Monday morning. I'll just try to work with these two for now. After I raise the male back to health, I'll try a neutral aquarium with a divider. So it will probably be a while before I try again.

I'm just suprised the female managed to pull off the upset, even though she had home field advantage. The male just seemed so studly and invinceable.
 
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