The best way to get them to breed is to provide the male with more than one female. I’ve kept mine with just one female for several months but nothing really happened. As soon as I added an other female she seemed to get jealous and a few weeks later they both were holding eggs.
Whether it’s an exception on the rule, I don’t know, but it did work in this case. They prefer to spawn on a flat rock but any sort of flat area will do just fine. I’ve seen mine cleaning a spot at the front corner of the tank until you could see the glass bottom, they seemed to be happy with that too. These fish are Piscivoor so they will need a diet with lots of proteins.
I keep all my Africans in water with a pH 8.2 GH 9 KH 5 (my tap water parameters) and they all spawn and breed successfully. Anything close to that will do.
If you want to save all the fry, you have to remove the female after 2 weeks (holding her eggs) and give her a separate (empty) tank to release the fry. I always let the female stay for two or three days with her fry, before I put her back in the main tank. If you watch closely you can see the female eating food (when you feed her) taking back the fry into her mouth, sort of chew on them and than spit everything out again. It seems they take care of the fry for only three or four days. After that, the fry are on their own and they could become prey, that’s why you have to remove the parent after 2 or 3 days.
I hope this will help you a bit.
Good luck.
Jimmy
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