I have a mixed cichlid tank. For some reason my fish just keep breeding and none of the fish will ever eat any of the babies. I can drop in gold fish and they are usually gone the instant they hit the water, but my fish won't touch the babies. If I am able to catch some of the smaller ones, ( they are in a 300 and it is hard to get in there) I can drop them in my other tank and they will get eaten quickly. It is almost like the fish can smell that they belong there and leave them alone. I have thought about putting my red devil from my other tank in there for a while cause I think he would clean up, but also might beat up everybody else. Does anyone know how this works? My tank is starting to get super crowded, and some of the babies are hybrids that nobody will want. I might have to take them to the LFS to be feeders.
Why won't my fish eat babies in the tank?
- Thread starter lucas2
- Start date
what species are they? if you have some true piscivores in there, at some point these fish might get eaten
Mixed cichlids. I have quite a few africans of different types, a parrot, a bunch of convicts, a couple flowerhorns, a jack dempsey, a frontosa, and firemouths. I'm not sure if any of them are "true piscivores". I have a red devil, a midas (are these the same species?), a green terror, and a red snook in my other tank. I am pretty sure that the red snook is a fish eater for sure. Maybe I should put him in there and let him go to work.Cichlaholics Anonymous;2597690; said:
Flowerhorns are piscivores. They will eat what will fit in their mouth besides their temperament.
Mine are the two biggest fish in the tank(about 10 inches). They used to eat anything, including 3 new frontosas that I bought a while back, nice $45 meal) but now won't eat anything but pellets and never even looks at any of the little guys running around.Lupin;2597724; said:
That would work fine, actually I would just put them in my other tank and they would be eaten. The problem is that this is a 300 gallon tank and you need scuba gear to get down to the bottom. In order to catch a fish, I have to drain about half or more of the water and remove about 100 pounds of rock that I have stacked in there to create caves. This disturbs all of their little nests that they like to make. Then I would have to net all the big fish to get them out of the way, put them somewhere while I net all the little ones. This is alot of work, and if it's my only option, then I will wait till the next time I have to do a real good cleaning and gravel vac. I would like to get these guys out of there, and I just did my bianual deep cleaning last month. Also I am trying to figure out how this all works so that I can make sure I don't have this problem to deal with in the future.tcarswell;2598057; said: