Seeking information on breeding

[Cichlidfever]

I just moved my 7" male Grammodes and 5" female Grammodes from a 360 gallon community tank to a 90 gallon tank with hopes of getting them to breed. The female have laid eggs in the 360 gallon tank, but the other cichlids would eat them, although at the time, I didn't care because I wasn't trying to breed them.

First question is a 90 gallon (48"x18"x24") to small to breed them in?
What should the temperature be?
How often should I do water changes?
If the female do lay eggs, should I continue to do water changes?
What should I be feeding them?
Is their anything that I need to know or pay closer attention to?

 

[fish_n_vw]

90 gallons I would say is fine givin you provide hideing places for the female. Whem I breed I keep the water at 79 degrees and to trigger the spawning do a 50 percent water change with cooler water. After the young hatch you can only do water changes with the help of someone else to protect yourself from the parents and the young from getting sucked up have a friend hold a cut to the right size piece of plexi to segragate the fish to one side while you clean, then do the other. I do about 25 percent water change every 4 days always. And feed live and frozen to prime the pair for spawning. I think that covers it.

 

[abiddle]

Good advice above.
After the fry are free swimming I would remove them with a turkey baster and put them in a 10 gallon or larger tank with a bare bottom, heater and a sponge filter. Do research on raising brine shimp (Google Brine Shrimp direct). Feed live brine shrimp for 4 weeks them move to finely ground flake food. Be sure and clean the tank after every feeding with a lenght of airline tubing attached to a small stick/scewer for control. This is a lot of work and you need to think about what you will do with all the fry when they grow up.

If you leave them with the parents in the large tank they may get eaten, or sucked up into the filter. I have had better luck removing them.

 

[fish_n_vw]

I hate the long work of useing the airline to syphon out waste I useally go from around 300 fry to between 10 and 25 because I let the parents do the work for the first three weeks then I remove the fry. Abiddle is right though that is absouloutly the best way to turn out a large number of fry. I hope that's plenty of info and two diffrent ways of raising the fry (call mine the lazy dads way). Good luck.