Re: Failure keeping cichlids in the long term

["Alysoun McLaughlin" <alysoun@patriot.net>]

Incidentally, I've just discovered that the pair of kribs (the only healthy
cichlids in the tank, right now, except for one apparently healthy juvenile
angelfish and one that I had thought was a goner a week or so ago, but he
has since regrown his fins) have apparently been spawning regularly in the
tank for the past few weeks.  I've missed it completely... my husband
mentioned it this weekend, and either I'm completely blind, or he has just
been lucky and happened to see the mother herding fry on the two occasions
so far that she has emerged from the sea of rotala.  They are not regularly
acting like they're defending fry -- I've been watching for it, and I've had
the father krib chase my hand across the tank in the past, so I'd know --
and I suspect that the catfish are eating the eggs/fry fairly quickly.

I am not willing to blame the deaths of a few fish -- again, especially
since none of them are tetras -- in a 75 gallon tank on one amorous pair of
kribs, but I decided that it was worth noting.

Of course, I'm not sure whether it's an indication that:

1)  The tank conditions can't be that bad, because after all, the kribs are
spawning in it (a thought I don't give much credence to, considering that it
brings to mind a quote from the local fish store manager that kribs will
"breed in a toilet bowl");
1)  The kribs are spawning, getting aggressive with the other fish, and I'm
completely missing it; or
3)   My powers of observation are so pathetic that if I want to know what's
going on in my tank, I'd better ask my husband to do the monitoring.

Alysoun McLaughlin
Wheaton, MD



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