brucem

Welcome back!!

Venting can be tricky if the females are fully mature. The last one looks male. Males should have a fairly prominent forehead at 4 years and females not. Males should be a lot bigger but sub dominant males might be much smaller than the dominant male

The tube can come out further than that. This female of mine bred yesterday and her tube is not protruding so much today. It’ll be back to normal tomorrow

Don’t stress too much, but they are really hard to breed. Have you seen any females with tubes down yet? The agro might step up when that happens. i feed mine a mix of bait prawns (cut in half) and pellet. I will not feed for a day or two before feeding prawns. Mix up the water changes a bit and don’t do any for 2-3 weeks then do Water change and feed prawns. Try a few different things. I’d also try and settle on a breeding group and let them settle into the tank. Go with 1-2 males and 6-8 females. Always have a spare male in another tank if possible to give you options if needed. I’m not overly fussy with my water. Straight from the tap into the tank, plus prime, cichlid trace, buffer. My Moba first bred 8 years ago, I lost the WC male, went through a couple of F1s males that got bossed by the girls, I’m back to a WC male and they finally bred again. If you can get your hands on a WC male, I reckon it’s worth it

Almost impossible without thoroughly stripping down the tank, drying it out and all the media, substrate and decorations that are in the tank. I’ve tried to keep tanks clean of them. Only my fry tanks that have no substrate appear to be free of them. Clown loaches and other loaches will eat them and can really suppress the population but are unlikely to eradicate them. Loaches may also affect your breeding success of substrate spawners etc. I’ve given up at the moment and the populations have exploded. They shouldn’t affect the breeding success of substrate spawners, in my experience.

Malaysian trumpet snail.

Awesome Jason. Thanks for sharing those videos. Beautiful fish you have there.

Gnathochromis!!!! Wow

How are the guys going Matt? I’ve never kept them. But I have a similar situation with occies. They don’t step breed so if want the fry you have to remove them or remove the parents

Maybe users one here could think about updating their breeders register thread so we can see what’s still available.

That’s interesting. It’s good you’ve got friends in the right places. I understand that there are some people starting to import again. But I haven’t heard of them advertising to the public yet.

I didn’t think NT residents were allowed to keep cichlids for fear that anything released into the natural waterways could be devastating for native fish. Has that changed?

Has anyone had any quality/hybrid issues with some Melbourne breeders? I’ve heard mixed things with Malawi cichlids. The last thing we need with a dwindling gene pool, and species dropping out of the hobby is hybrids. Seems to be an issue with Malawi rather than tangs. I’ve only ever bought tangs from Max and have been more than satisfied with the fish I’ve received. Mods - feel free to delete or edit this general comment if it casts aspersions on a group of breeders that I cannot substantiate.

Some big geophagus would be nice.