kribs not breeding in community tank ?

[leigh]

hi there,

I have had my pair of kribs in my 120ltr community tank for months now and not a lot seems to be going on with them both there has bee a little shimmying going on between them but more often the not the male chases the female found the tank, i do have a 40ltr (10 gallons i think) in my room sdet up and ready to house some tang shell dwellers it has crushed coral sand , not plants , and loads of small rounded rocks and pebbles with few shells i was thinking and heres my big question would it be ok to put my kribs into it on there own to see if it helps them to get it on, or would i have to change the whole setup altogether to best suit the kribs ??

any help given will be greatly appreciated.
many thanks leigh.

 

[Cat]

Well Kribs are one of the easier chichlids to spawn. I had a problem with the male chasing the female before, cause she got introduced at a later date and he had become terretorial, when I moved them together to another tank he stopped and they sort of teamed up together against the other fish. Perhaps seperate them for a little while and then reintroduce them to the tank at the same time. add some target fish and increase the temp a little this all usually helps with kribs.
Also what is your PH, as its a major factor when kribs spwan as depending on weather its more acid or alkaline affects the male to female ratio drastically.

 

[leigh]

well idid a check on the ph in my community its at 7.5-8.0 it is slighly high i know but it is what comes from the tap my lfs when asked about this says it is ok cause the water in there tanks are the same its just the area i guess the temp is 24-26 as for the 10 gallon in my room ph is 8.0-8.5 i think this is because of the crushed coral sand but temp is the same. They were both introduced together they both came from the same batch at the lfs.

 

[~*LuvMyKribs*~]

Just give them some time. Kribs are funny little fish and they will work it out on thier own. They will chase some days and be best friends the next. Even after they spawn it might take a few times to get it right and they will most likely loose the first batch.

I think its acidity=more females and basic=more males.... i think. you want something around 7.0 or a little lower to get a good mix of sexes. many batches of kribs around here at the pet store tend to be all males... but my water is more acidic and slightly blackwater and i get a good number of females in mine.

keep them in the community tank and try maybe to find out why your ph is a little high in there. i would add some wood logs if you really want your kribs to be happy... they love wood. and provide them with a little cave.

and other than that just give them time.... they will mate when the female is full of eggs.


-Diana

 

[somefinnfishy]

water conditions ph/kh-gh are not that big of a deal.
First i need to know whats in that comunity tank?you need busy fish like danios or guppies for them to chase around ( docile targets other than eachother that wont hide)
Second the kribs are very good at hidding eggs most of the time the first sign they spawned is a cloud of fry swimming around
Also they are good at defending their eggs but lots of fish will beat them and take the eggs anyway SNAILS have taken lots of my egg clusters
Temps try keeping at 75f for a week or two then bump it up to 83f at the same time bring the ph down to the 7.0 range also lengthen the lighting hours.
If your good and can do this to end during a full moon cycle you will have fry!!!

 

[leigh]

well i do have 6 danios and now only one lonesome guppy , other then that i have
2 bala shark
8 neon tetra
2 ancistrus
3 clown loach
1 golden sucking loach

as for the ph i have tried coutless times to reduce ph levels to no avail the ph is the same as what comes out of my taps and all the products i have used cant be used long term ?any suggestions??

i do have a chunck of hollowed out bogwood and 2 caves as my sucking loach took over the first one i got.
would it be likely that any the obove fish would eat any of the fry as well

 

[~*LuvMyKribs*~]

Actually yes the danios might pick off a few. I had my kribs in my 20 gal community for a long time with danios and an angel, and ram. They had countless batches of fry but no matter how much i fed the babies with an eye dropper they wouldn't make it much past two weeks old. Once i moved the kribs to thier own tank there was an almost 100% survial rate of the fry.

Kribs are one of the easiest fish to breed though... give them water and a rock or two and they will figure something out.

Lots of wood tends to neutralize the ph... but since i am almost strickly africans now i know a lot more about raising the ph than lowering it

like i said before... dont worry about it too much they will eventually mate. you cant force them anyways... hehe

 

[PumaWard]

My kribs only spawned once and a while in my community tank, and even then, the fry all died off by the time week one rolled around. They still shimmied and did the whole song and dance, just kept breeding to a minimum.

As for the pH, I read somewhere that kribs naturally occur in water with a pH of 8, so I would suspect they should be able to breed fine. The best advice you'll ever get is to not use any chemicals to lower pH. Safer routes are RO mixes, and peat filtration.

 

[ChicoRaton]

mixing with RO water is the best way to lower ph. It also lowers hardness and TDS. In my tank I've been trying to get my kribs to spawn for a few months now and nothing has happened yet. They seem to have worked out their differences and decided to be friendly now but who knows..To get my ph down I inject CO2. I bring the ph down to 6.8-7, so if they do spawn I should have a good even mix of males and females. I also have plants, so they like the co2 as well, hehe.

 

[somefinnfishy]

I have great luck with parents growing out their fry.
But in a pinch I use a breeding pot and wait 1/2 way between hatching and swimming and move them into a empty 10 with out the parents.
My feeling is they dont like the loaches give them a corner with their cave type things and then use wood rocks to give them a wall/perimeter to defend
Also you must try a coconut shell.
As stated above all chems are bad peat and RO the way to go.
If you did chose to use a softening product.
I've had good luck with seachems acid buffer and discus buffer
used together. the discus buffer spendy to use on a large tank but the acid buffer go's a long way.But the discus buffer is the one that cut it down and you keep it down with the acid. I'll use this on fish once in a while for spawning never long term.