Recently we had the opportunity to acquire some nice specimens of this species, and hearing that they were fairly rare in the aquarium hobby, we decided to try our hand at breeding them. Laetacara Buckelkopf is a dwarf Cichlid from the Amazon basin, loving soft, slightly acidic waters. It is an unassuming fish as an adolescent, sharing the qualities of most SA dwarf cichlids in that it is not a very colorful fish. This changes when the fish becomes older, developing wonderful coloration's of blues, reds, and iridescent spangles. These colors intensify during breeding, producing a tremendously colored fish! The fish has the characteristic "smile" of all Laetacaras. "Buckelkopf" means "hump-headed " we believe, but the fish does not show this characteristic that we have seen.

As with many fish, breeding has to do with water, and this fish is a lover of clean water. Our tap water is naturally suited to this fish. The ph is 6.8 and hardness is 50-80 ppm right from the tap. This means an ample supply of fresh water was available any time needed it, and a good thing too.

We initially bought three of these fish. We picked as best we could and assumed we had two females and a male. Within six days of putting them in an aquarium and feeding only flake we had the small female and the larger male making spawning runs. Many passes were made, and the process took several hours. By morning however, the eggs were gone. Ok, no problem, this is very typical behavior in new parents. We would wait. Well, the other female turned out to be a male, and in a contest for dominance, ripped the lower lip off the spawning male, who died a few days later. we were devastated. After a few quick phone calls, we were able to locate a few more of these fish. we purchased two, and moved the whole bunch to an aquarium with some small Laetacara Thayeri, until we could pick a mated pair. This happened very quickly, and two paired off.

We set up a couple of 10 gallon aquariums with sponge filters, 10 lbs gravel, and a cave each. The water used was of course our tap water, with some blackwater extract added. For food we fed TetraMin Pro, our beef heart mix (for our discus), and white worms. We find that white worms work very well as a conditioning food due to the high fat content. To keep the water clean we changed 50% of the water twice weekly. About a week and a half into this project we noticed that the female wasn't coming out to eat. Sneaking around to the back of the tank we noticed her in a pit in the gravel sitting on top of what seemed to be an impossible numbers of wrigglers! The male and female took turns on guard duty while the other fanned the fry. We almost panicked while watching the fish, as the parent no fanning the fry would make mad dashes, scratching his or her side on the gravel, and behaving strangely. Just then we thought we had a parasitic infection. We moved away to do some research, and noticed that the behavior completely stopped, but started again as soon as we approached the tank. Apparently the fish was doing this either as a sign of aggression, or was trying to look infected, in the hope that we would stop investigating and not find the fry.

We immediately stepped up the water changes to 50% every other day. Well, to complicate matters more, the other two buckelkopf decided the next day that they liked each other as well, and spawned as well. Each pair had close to three hundred fry by our estimate, huge numbers of fish!. The fry hatch in about two days, and the fry start free swimming in about five after that. The parents are amazingly attentive to the absolutely HUGE cloud of fry surrounding them. In fact the First hatching the parents looked so harried that we took about 100 of the fry out about one day after they were free swimming, and placed them in a 40 gallon breeder tank. This is filtered by a HOT magnum 250 pro with a sponge connected to the prefilter (it fits right on, and works REAL well).

About a week later tragedy struck. A day after we removed another large batch of fry the female jumped out of the tank and was later found in the corner of our basement. Despite a valiant attempt, the male quickly tired of caring for the few remaining fry, and turned on them. we quickly intervened, removing the fry. The difference between the fry was obvious, and the ones that had remained with the parents were much larger. we recommend leaving as many as possible with the parents if you can. This is exactly what we planned for the other pair, but we removed them a week and a half after free swimming as the parents had lost interest in the fry.

Feeding the fry did not pose a problem. There was approximately 500-600 fish between the two spawnings, and they greedily accepted baby brine shrimp. They did not take as well to prepared baby foods, but would accept them as a substitute. Additionally they are good scavengers, and when hungry could often be seen cruising the breeder tank floor or sponge looking for a morsel. As soon as they are large enough, we plan ion introducing them to our beef heart mix, with which we have been getting great results in good growth. These fish are fast growers, attaining 4-5 millimeters within a few short weeks.

Any questions? Comments? We can be reached at AquariumCare - fireman@shaysnet.com (Stan) and ethantus@shaysnet.com (Audrey).