Holding question on red zebra

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T

TexasMomma

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 21, 2006
71
0
0
Greenville, Texas
Ok I have about 7 books on Africans, and can't find anywhere that will tell me how long a female red zebra will hold her eggs for. I have one and this is her second bunch of eggs, I think she ate the first bunch.

I also have another female holding that is a powder blue scofolii (can spell for poop, sorry dont have my books in front of me). This is her first bunch and has been holding for 4 days now.

This is all new to me and exciting! I just wish a had a better book, anyone know of any? LOL

Water temp-80
ph- 7.9
th-very hard
all others in the safe to zero range
 
Hey, how ya been TM? Didn't know you were doing mbunas now. Alright, normally the rule of thumb is about 18 days after you've noticed her holding. Just wait until her mouth is so full that she can't quite close her mouth and she looks like she's going to let them go any minute. . . then wait 3 more days. They normally don't eat them but it's easy to miss them finally spitting them out and they normally get eaten up pretty quick in a tank full of mbunas. If you're on the ball and you know for sure when they've started holding then about 3 weeks and you can strip them. Just pull them out and put them in a tupperware or something that you can hold them out of the water and wash water through their mouth to flush the babies out. I use one of those plastic holders they use at the pet store when they net fish. Then I put the end of a pipette in their mouth and flush tons of water through their mouth until they don't have any more babies left.
 
:nilly: I remove my females from the main tank activity by putting them into a breeding net. In this way she can rear her babies without being harassed by the other fish, especially the other females. Between 3-4 weeks I start to drop in little bits of food to try and entice her to spit the babies. Once she has done this I then feed her in the net for 2-3 days before returning her to the tank. This works extremely well for me. If not done I find the num,ber of fry surviving is a huge lot less than doing it the way I described. Good luck.
:naughty: :ROFL: :headbang2
 
Thanks to all of you for your help, but to be honest...I probibly wont do anything right now to raise the babies. I am glad though to know babies can happen and in the future but I'm not set up right now to start raising.

Cube I'm glad to hear from you....I do need to talk to ya soon, I'll PM you my # I need help with the africans. I'll send you some pics of my NEW FREE tank! Ihave it full of fish and I have no clue what half of them are! LOL

Thanks to y'all
Momma
 
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