Problems breeding my Cyrtocara Moorii (Blue Dolphins)

[jvin85]

I bought an aquarium second hand off craigslist and amongst the fish were 2 decent sized cyrtocara moorii.

Within a week or so they started to display aggression and mating signals. At first I thought I was fortunate and had male and a female as they started their typical mating dance, but then realized that both were laying eggs (roughly a day apart).

I did my google research and found out they lay eggs roughly every 45 days. I also learnt how to figure out their sex (lower dorsal fin is rounder on females, more sharp edge on males)

I went out and bought a male that was relatively the same size and introduced him, hopeing that he would do the rest of the job needed to breed these beautiful fish. So far a few months have gone by and no luck.

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions? I've noticed these fish being quite rare at my LFS.

I also noticed that the male seems to go into his own spawning cycle usually a week or two before the females are ready to lay eggs... It looks like a rod (penis?) extends a bit and he tries to do his thing with them...

I'm so confused as to why he would do this when they're not ready to lay eggs. The only thing I could come up with is that he's running on his own love cycle, something I clearly must be imagining.

I'm lookin for any advice or tips.

 

[geelite]

I bought an aquarium second hand off craigslist and amongst the fish were 2 decent sized cyrtocara moorii.

Within a week or so they started to display aggression and mating signals. At first I thought I was fortunate and had male and a female as they started their typical mating dance, but then realized that both were laying eggs (roughly a day apart).

I did my google research and found out they lay eggs roughly every 45 days. I also learnt how to figure out their sex (lower dorsal fin is rounder on females, more sharp edge on males)

I went out and bought a male that was relatively the same size and introduced him, hopeing that he would do the rest of the job needed to breed these beautiful fish. So far a few months have gone by and no luck.

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions? I've noticed these fish being quite rare at my LFS.

I also noticed that the male seems to go into his own spawning cycle usually a week or two before the females are ready to lay eggs... It looks like a rod (penis?) extends a bit and he tries to do his thing with them...

I'm so confused as to why he would do this when they're not ready to lay eggs. The only thing I could come up with is that he's running on his own love cycle, something I clearly must be imagining.

I'm lookin for any advice or tips.

Hi. I am too trying to breed my blue dolphins. Anything new to share?

 

[jvin85]

Yeah, here's an update.

That male was actually a female. About 2-3 months later I caught him doing his own thing again, this time I locked him off from the rest of the population to see what the heck was going on and that's when I finally saw eggs. So bye bye male and hello female.

I just purchased (last week) a male from CL. The previous owner "claims" it's a male and had produced his own offspring with it in the past. So we'll see... I'll have to post another update with results after a month.

The rather large shame of it all is that my local area which rarely had this species of fish just got flushed with them in the last few weeks. Seeing tons of ads for them now. I believe a local breeder realized their rareity here and is flooding the market.