Kribs as single fathers

[igorshos]

Hi,

I had two kribs and five red-eye tetras in a 12G tank. All was well for two weeks. About a week ago the female krib disappeared and I assumed she layed eggs and was guarding the fry. A couple of days ago the male krib started attacking the tetras so I had to set up a second tank and move the tetras there. Yesterday morning I saw the male krib parading a swarm of fry, so I opened the cave and saw what could have remained of the female. She was completely decomposed.

I don't think it is normal for krib females to die during spawning, I am clueless about what happened.

Now I have a male krib and lots of fry. He seems to take very good care of them (at least this is what it looks like).

What should I do now? I have a second 10G tank I set up two days ago to save the tetras. I could move the male to that tank and leave the fry to fend for themselves since there is no other fish in the tank now, but the male is doing a good job so I don't think I should change anything.

I am feeding the tank Liquid fry food #1 two-three times a day.

It looks like there is a whole lot of fry, how are they all supposed to survive? Will the father krib start culling the fry after some time or should I remove some of it myself?

When is a good time to introduce another female? I wonder if it was the male krib who did the first one in...

Thanks!

 

[~*LuvMyKribs*~]

No, its not usual for the female to die during spawning. I'm not sure what could have happend. It is likely the male got overly defensive of the fry and killed the female. Sometimes it happens that the parents will start to bicker so badly that they ignore the fry outright. (mine have done this a couple times). Sometimes this happens when a lot of the fry have been lost, but this isnt in your case.

I'm sorry about the loss but i would not introduce another female until the fry have grown up. Keep feeding them liquid fry and try some frozen baby brine shrimp as well. The father will do a good job caring for them. Not all will survive... out of my most recent batch of 70-80 eggs i had 30-40 fry, and a month later i now have just under 20 juvie kribs. Nature will take its course in selecting the survivors. I'm sure the parents eat the dead ones though. (i've never seen a dead fry).

Don't add any other fish to the tank just keep the male and the babies in there until they are older, or until you decide what to do with them. You could remove the fry to another tank by siphoning them up, but they will most likely be fine with the father. If he killed the mother to protect the fry he's sure gonna take good care of them!

After the babies have grown and gone (or jsut gone), then you can try adding another female. Be very careful and watch them, if the male is unruly i would suggest trying a different male. You dont want him killing the female and other tank mates whenever mating time comes. Although, a 12 gallon is fairly small if not aquascaped properly, and probebly the cause of the aggression.

HTH

 

[igorshos]

There was no aggression between the male and the female that I could see. If the male decided to kill her, he would at least chase her our of the cave... I wonder if she could get stuck inside - the cave is a piece of lace rock with rather sharp and uneven surface and they were digging gravel inside so it could settle on her. There was a pit under the cave when I took it out of the tank.

In any case, next time I'll try something else for a cave. After the fry grows up I am planning to move the father to a 10G and get him another female + some safe PVC piping or clay pots, and convert the 12g into a small community tank.

 

[~*LuvMyKribs*~]

Sounds like a good plan. I didnt consider her being able to get trapped in there. Then again, i didnt know what the cave was. Kribs are diggers and will organize a breeding site if they want to. The reason i thought aggression was the culprit is because you mentioned the male suddenly becoming aggressive towards the other tank mates. Thier moods change a lot- depending on thier breeding cycle. Mine will be friends one day and enemies the next. Kribs are funny that way.

Anywho, i would reccommend a halved coconut shell as a cave. That is what i use in my krib breeding tank (10 gallon) and they love it. It looks really natural too. Halves clay pots can also work. Just make sure nothing can collapse on your fish.

Here's a pic of my krib tank:

Kribs like wood and sand. If you were going to make them their own tank- try to cater it to thier likes. Low light and slight blackwater.

 

[Stu Stocker]

OK, sounds bad on me but I got a 4ft tank. This came with 20 fish which are not to my liking, bought breeding pair of Kribs, made a cave and then many eggs on the roof, after hatching parents fighting but more like pecking locking jaws and then all happy and courting again. They battered 9" plec, but the other little scurrying one got battered too. However then The female died, it was mortal combat as she had puncture wounds from the fight, next day dead catfish ?. So I had a 4 inch male 200 babies and he simply couldn't chase others and protect alone. I took out the other fish and they died(tbh I didn't want them anyway) now he's got 48"x19"x17" tank alone apart from 150 kids. Kids trust him and he's doing a good job, been 30 years since I bred kribs, female used to mouth protect babies, what about the male????

 

[jake72]

The male will take care of the frys. One problem is the tank is just too small for a pair of kribs. She could have died of many things from bad water quality to old age - there is just not enough details to determine cause of death but i find it unlikely the male killed her. Conversely since you have frys you will likely have another female in a few months. I had some kribs in a 40 breeder but unfortunately they are too efficient at breeding so i rather quickly got rid of them. Btw as long as your tank is mature and have a lot of biofilm you will not have to do a lot to feed the frys (though adding bbs or similar doens't hurt). The parents will even grind up food and then spit out for the frys....

 

[fishorama]

IME, males loose interest in fry protection in ~2 weeks. If a female is still available, he'll be ready to breed again then...& fry may well be eaten. A single male with a lot of fry won't eat all the fry, some will grow too large.

I think there may be more issues in your tank, Stu. Even the most aggressive krib pair would likely not be able to "kill" a large pleco. Tell us more about your tank & fish please.

 

[Wyomingite]

First, some bad advice earlier in this thread. Krib males do not often kill females during breeding. I've had four or five pairs over the years and have never lost a female to a male during breeding. I've never lost a female period except to old age, actually. Second, I've bred well over 100 species of cichlids, probably closer to, or maybe even more than, 150 species, and have never found a cichlid species under 5" for which a 48" tank is inadequate for breeding. A high percentage under 3-1/2" to 4" are fine in 30" to 36" tanks, including kribs. Period. Anybody wants to discuss this more and I'll be more than happy to help you set up your tank for success.

Fishorama is dead on. The male will start eating fry when he's ready to mate again, or drive them away from the spawning site if they are too large to eat. A pair will typically use the same spawning site (typically a cave) over and over.

I also can't see a krib pair killing a 9" pleco, for two reasons. First, kribs don't have a whole lotta bite behind their bark, definitely not enough to hurt a 9" pleco. They simply don't do enough damage. If the pleco can get into their cave, he'll probably eat their spawn before they irritate him enough to drive him away. I've seen this happen with convicts and firemouths, so I guarantee a krib pair won't drive him away. Second, they usually have relatively small home territories and a 48" tank is more than enough volume for a pleco to get away from a pair.

Puncture wounds in a dead cichlid killed due to aggression is highly unusually. Shredded fins, missing scales and lesions on the body, missing eye(s), red and bleeding gill covers, even missing gill plates, yes. But puncture wounds, that is very strange. I'd be interested to see pictures of the female's body, though I suspect it's already already been disposed of. Like Fishorama, I suspect there is something else going on with your tank.

WYite

 

[fishorama]

The pleco spines could inflict pucture wounds. It seems like the krib would move away when the plec started thrashing back & forth but maybe not in time.
My experiences are much like WYite's. Females are a lot more feisty than males, he's more apt to get beaten up if he's not up to female's expectations. Females are ready to breed at a younger smaller size than males.

An interesting aside, we used to have kribs that would have entire batches of same gender fry. We thought it may be from pH differences but never put it to the test. & the attrition method of fry control led to more males since they tend to be larger.

 

[Wyomingite]

An interesting aside, we used to have kribs that would have entire batches of same gender fry. We thought it may be from pH differences but never put it to the test. & the attrition method of fry control led to more males since they tend to be larger.

This isn't surprising to me. There are studies that have found that the gender in cichlid spawns is governed by temperature in some species, like many reptiles. Warmer temperatures produce more males, cooler more females. There have also been studies that have found that fry in some species hatch genderless, and that gender is determined as a juvenile based on the percentage of each gender already in the local population, based on the concentration of pheromones. I don't remember which group was the subject of the first study, but the second condition was found during a study on Lake Tanganyikan lamprologines. Unfortunately, not a lot of additional research has been conducted along these lines in either case, and so it's not known how common these conditions are in cichlids in general.

Two things about my experience with cichlids suggest both conditions may be far more common than just the groups in the studies. First, after reading the first paper I dropped the temperatures in my mbuna breeding tanks and started getting far more females in my spawns, which is a good thing as they are harem breeders. Second, and this is actually a general rule of thumb for buying young cichlids that has been around for years, is if you buy the three smallest and the three largest in a group of juveniles, you're almost guaranteed a pair. I honestly don't remember not getting at least one pair, and often two, by using this method, and I've applied it to cave/substrate spawning Rift Valley, West African, Central American and the few South American species I've kept (mostly acaras and apistos).

WYite