Its pretty straightforward. If the male is coloring up and digging a nest, you're good to go. Just need some ripe females. The species actually doesn't matter, they hybridize quite readily.
Get some larger stones, 1" or so, to go with your gravel. The male will pile these up to form a nest.
Get several females, depending on the size of the tank and the male.
The females will be fat when ripe, and the spawning takes hours, the male will spawn with multiple females or just one over the course of several days. You will see many tiny eggs on the stones in the nest; the eggs are small in relation to cichlid eggs, hard, usually amber. At this point, best to remove the female(s).
I bred longear in a 36" 30 gallon tank. The tank was setup with some large emergent plants (similar to sword plants) and a mix of gravel and stones. 1 male longear, and 3 females. The male dug out under one of the plants exposing the roots, and moved some stones there. Two females spawned, and I went ahead and removed them all because there were a lot of eggs. From there, the fry raise about like cichlids- newly hatched brine shrimp. The male will lose interest once the fry start swimming, and should be removed.
Josh
