this aquarium might look like it houses two different types of fish but they are the exact
same species this is the ever fascinating errata cichlid from lake malawi all of these guys start
off as mini versions of themselves stripes and all at the end of around six months though the
males have matured and started changing color going from yellow to like a blackish blue
and that's something i really enjoy about this fish is the males are so easily identifiable
yet dramatically different from the females almost looking like a separate fish altogether now at
this point they're sexually mature but if that isn't enough the males will start to fight and
attempt to establish dominance in their aquarium when a male is confident enough in himself he will
dig impressions in the substrate and attempt to entice a mature female over with some seductive
thin movements and flashing the female will lay eggs and then scoop them up in her mouth
where the male will release sperm into her egg-filled mouth fertilizing them and this
is where we have a problem the female will hold eggs in her mouth for up to three weeks
during this time she won't eat and that's for obvious reasons when she finally does release
the fry there are tiny bite-sized snacks for everyone in the tank so we need to consider
intervening by artificially incubating the fry ourselves we can ensure maximum survival of the
fry and health of the mother not only has she gone without three weeks and she's not eating
and weakening herself over time but if she spits those fry out in the tank the odds of
other fish eating them are incredibly high so we need to consider intervening by artificially
incubating the fry ourselves we ensure maximum survival of the fry and health of the mother
so we will do exactly that so in today's video we're going to strip the mouth broding mothers
we're going to build an artificial incubator that will allow us to tumble the eggs similar
to what goes on in the mother's mouth and again this is to ensure maximum survival of the fry
and longtivity and health of the mother but how do we know if a female has eggs in her mouth in the
first place well simply put the non-mouth-roading fish will be obvious compared to one that is the
throat of a carrying mother will be bulging so to build an artificial egg incubator or more commonly
known as an egg tumbler in the hobby we need a smooth container my first thoughts as always was
how can we reuse a water bottle for this and then i remember doing this years ago when i was raising
a colony of frontosa i went to my local hardware store and i found some fluorescent light bulb
covers these are plastic cheap i only cost two bucks a piece for me they were on sale it was
like this was meant to happen i got them home took the end caps off and set them aside we're going to
need these then cut them to the appropriate height i like to do 75 percent of the aquarium's height
this ensures that i have lots of movement in terms of flow of the air bubbler then i took an old
fishnet that my piranha bit through and basically rendered it useless cut that up so i could create
barriers in the incubator so fish can't get in and the fry can't get out i removed all
the extra plastic from the caps so we could have complete and full flow through the incubator then
of course took some of that cut up net put the top on and that was almost it of course we're
going to need to be able to mount this to the aquarium so i drilled some holes in the side
and took a old canister filters return line suction cup and put that on there now we'll
move forward we'll come back to how this works in a minute i took a clear plastic container
which is a lot bigger than i necessarily would typically use but i want to capture this on video
i filled it with some tank water and of course did a water change on the 120 gallon tank containing
the aratus i've removed some of the decorations so they're easier to catch and then started catching
the females now depending on the stage of the fry that they are in the mother's mouth she
might simply release them anyways she could get stressed and just spit them out because obviously
self-preservation is the core of every living organism for others that are not spitting them out
i take a plastic toothpick that's flimsy and not too sharp but it's narrow enough to slip into the
mother's mouth and forcefully open it once you kind of get it in there she'll just open it and
start spitting the fry up and then once again we have another problem not all the fry are going
to be at the same stages of their life cycle some might be eggs some might be tiny fry some might be
fully formed some might still have a full yolk sac but can't swim around some might have a yolk sac
but can swim around and which ones do we actually incubate we're going to want to incubate the ones
that are unable to move around on themselves or are still an egg these are the ones that we
want to simulate still being in the mother's mouth to get these guys into the incubator some people
like to use spoons which i feel is useless some others like to use a straw and suck them out i
think it's too high risk of sucking them into your mouth while others will use a spoon and a straw
the ultimate tool to get these uh fish out is going to be a turkey baster or some sort of a
syringe so you could just suck them out i used to have a turkey baster just for this purpose
but i don't know where it is so i just used some airline hose and a little container created a
siphon and sucked them out this proved to be one of the fastest methods and safe they're constantly
in contact with water as for the incubator itself the reason it's so tall is that i don't have a lot
of people just have an airline pump and the higher up in the tube you go the less suction at the
bottom it's going to be and what we want to do is continuously put that airline hose in until at the
bottom the eggs are just kind of tumbling around they're not even really lifting off of that match
they're just moving around like they would in a mother's mouth this is so that uh fungus and other
things cannot grow on them or kill them now we wait for like we can wait up to two or three weeks
waiting for these guys to become free swimming and that is when we'll take them out of the incubator
and that is when we can start feeding those guys for all the ones that were free swimming
and or the ones that still had a little bit of yolk sac they can go in the aquarium and once
that yolk sac is completely gone i could begin feeding things like live brine shrimp or even
frozen baby brine shrimp or even crushed up flake food it doesn't have to be crazy or anything like
that now there's actually a ton of fish that are breeding out here right now of course the
erratis the shell dwellers my walru a few other fish that are showing signs and or i think they
already have some might be pregnant et cetera but a big reason why i haven't been breeding
is for this exact type of video not only do we have to have their main aquarium and deal with
fish that are breeding and aggressive and you know some are even will even get killed by uh
dominant males but then we have to have a grow-out tank and a fry tank and different size it's a lot
to have if you want to get into uh breeding fish but then you'd better like them and for
somebody like me i already dedicated i don't want to dedicate too many tanks or resources to raising
fish my quarantine tanks are now filled with fry of you know even the convicts are breeding there's
everybody's starting to breed out here and i'll dom i'll document every fish just like
i am in this video if you guys like this type of video make sure you give it a thumbs up so i know
but then what do you do with the fry of course we have a number of options and i've made a video
about this before about breeding fish um and why i stopped of course when you have fish for sale and
you put them up for sale on different sites uh you got to deal with people that are going to be late
people that don't show up people that come early people that stay too long
you know changing schedules it's constant all day back and forth
and then and it just becomes a bit it just becomes a bit of a headache and then of course
what would i suggest if you had fry well get involved with your local aquarium
club a lot of the times they'll have auctions or they'll have a fry exchange
or that you could potentially just donate them to the club so they can raise money or make a
or develop a relationship with your local fish store let them know that you plan on breeding
these fish and if you do and you can bring them in healthy are they willing to purchase
and or give you store credit and that's probably one of your best bets because selling
you can flood the local market incredibly quickly and or flood the people that you
are able to sell to the store is going to have access to far more hobbyists than you ever will
so a lot of these things are something to think about uh i don't mind breeding right now so
long as it doesn't become uh overwhelming with too many fry i do like to document the process and the
life cycle of the aquarium hobby is huge and breeding fish is a big part of that so
again if you guys like this type of video let me know in the comments section below if you have
anything to add also leave that in the comment section below i'll see you guys in the next video