Re: Microgeophagus ramirezi

[Marco Lacerda <marcolacerda@ax.apc.org>]

Carlos Eduardo Alves Ribeiro wrote:
> 
> I`ve noticed in my tanks what I`ve just read in some books: the tank-bred
> M. ramirezi normally eats the eggs or the fry. I`ve tried more than 15
> times to left the parents with the eggs unsuccessfully, the eggs or the fry
> were eaten. Later I tried with 3 tank-bred pairs from different sources and
> had the same bad results ... Last year I tried to breed a wild-caught pair
> of M. ramirezi and noticed that they were excellent parents.Can this
> deffective behavior of tank-bred M. ramirezi be caused by large scale
> production, where the eggs are removed from the parents, letting fish with
> this deffective behavior survive in large numbers (in the nature, the bad
> parents wouldn't let the offspring live) ?

Hello, Carlos!
I hope you don't mind I reply you in English (as we're both 
BraziliansŠ).
At first, are you sure you got really tank-bred pairs of M. ramirezi in 
Brazil? Because normally all M. ramirezi sold in petshops are bred in 
outside earthen pools, in the region of Mage.  I've never heard of 
anybody comercially breeding M. ramirezi in tanks in Brazil.
Or maybe it is from an aquarist coleague, in this case you can state 
that the fish is tank bred; but if they were bought in a local petshop, 
I could never say that they're tank bred, quite the opposite.
Also, wild M. ramirezi are not sold in Brazil, they originate from 
Venezuela and are not present in our country!  And, as far as I know, 
wild M. ramirezi were never imported into Brazil.

About the behaviour you mention (parents eating spawns), yes, I noticed 
it to be quite common in long time tank-bred species of dwarf cichlids. 
This is a deviation from normal pattern, as commercial tank breeders 
take the eggs out of the female's care, in order to artificially hatch, 
and so have a larger total number of fry.
But I don't think it was your M. ramirezi situation, bcs of the reasons 
explained above.

All the best, Marco.