Nannacara Anomala Breeding Journal

I'm down to about 25 fry i think. The ones that are left are starting to show markings and their fins are visible to the naked eye. I honestly wasnt even expecting any fry to make it this far seeing as I dont have any BBS on hand so I'm content with what i have. I still feed powdered flakes 3 times a day. It seems to do some good. ?‍♂️
 
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oops, should have specified. 45 ish fry.

So yep, the tank only went down to like 65 (still too cold and i feel bad) but nevertheless they survived.
Tbh is have pretty bad water. gH is 13 (so not awful) but could be better. kH is only a buffer. It doesn't directly affect your water and thus doent affect your fish. My pH on the other hand IS bad. 7.7. Although all my fish seem to do alright. But because of that I only chose fish that can handle a higher pH and gH.
nanna are hearty fishes as long as the water change is slow. My male is nearly 3 years old but i never had a lot of luck with females so i gave up on them for now. When i move and can have unlimited tanks i might try again. They are not the flashiest fish out there but i really like mine a lot - more so than the angels and gbr (he is not in an aquarium with either of those - rather he is in a 40B with some borelli - another hearty fish).
 
Amazoniantanklvr, It's great to see you back, I hope those fry can get ahead, I've never had Nannacaras, in fact I've never seen them but there are quite interesting species.
 
Amazoniantanklvr, It's great to see you back, I hope those fry can get ahead, I've never had Nannacaras, in fact I've never seen them but there are quite interesting species.
Hi Lalo! Nice to see you again!
They are a fascinating species.

Im down to about 20 fry but they are all doing well. I can see body markings and fins.
 
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Ok, been way too long since i updated. So the numbers slowly dwindled until I was at about 10. At that stage they were eating well. Then I started seeing a dead fry about every day. I was wondering what was going on as they were all eating well. Next day I see the mom attack and kill one. Removed her immediate. I was down the 3 then. Moved everyone to a breeder box and set them in my 36. 2 died shortly after. But I an glad to report that the lone survivor is still doing well to this day. About 3/4 of an in long but I just feed once a day now.

I was fish-sitting for a friend so i had my 20 cleared out and set up with her fish. She came back from vacation about 3 weeks ago and i set up my pair to breed again. In 5 days I had eggs. Moved the male the second I saw the eggs. Mom is currently hovering over a group of wigglers that aren't free swimming yet. I'm going to try feeding BBS this time, but we go on vacation in three weeks, and it would be unrealistic to have my neighbor keep a culture of brine shrimp for me so I'm going to have her use First Bites. I'm hoping more than one will survive this time. I'll probably move the mom around 4-5 weeks.
 
That sounds like typical cichlid breeding behavior to me. Males lose interest & want to breed again very soon, maybe a week or so at best.. Females hang in a week or 2 longer but are soon ready to breed again. She will eat fry that don't move off of her breeding area. Next!!
 
New spawns and fry are always a good thing. They should always make one do the happy fish dance. At least they do for me ?

My water is ideal for softer water species. so I mostly keep them and have never done African cichlids. However years back I wanted to see mouth brooding and was given a pair of P. Nicholsi. They are an African riverine cichlid and live in water more like mine. They spawned and then I learned I had to remove the male as he would not leave her alone.

So when she finally spit them out I was happy to have fry swimming around the tank. Two days later I had 0 fry, she ate them all. Back to the drawing board. The next time I pulled the male, then I stripped her and put the fry back in the tank and segregated her. I then was able to raise the kids, When the offspring were out of danger I returned them both to the tank and he promptly killed her. A daughter took over her job and i got another spawn I did not care as much about. Then he seemed to disappear and I found hes dead body stuck in the massive roots of a clump of java ferns. I gave away all of the offspring as I had managed to see mouth brooding in action and I needed the tank space for other fish. I was given the nicholsi pair by one of the legendary apisto breeders or the time.
https://thecichlidstage.com/interview-with-don-zilliox/

As for feeding fry, this is one of the most important parts of ending up with many healthy offspring. It really is important to feed the proper diet for this. There should be other options you can choose instead of crushed flakes. Have you looked into things like frozen cyclops or rotifers? I do not do live food and frozen BBS are very expensive. But I do a lot of frozen and Repashy as the next best options after live.

I fed infusoria to tiny cory fry which worked well initially until they could accept something a bit bigger. But I did this by moving java moss covered rocks from planted tanks to the fry tank as needed.

Years back I keep DD black angels and they spawned. It was insane numbers. I had to feed live BBS at first but weened them to other foods by mixing frozen cyclop-eeze (no longer available) with the BBS after about 5 -7 days. In the feeding frenzy they accepted both and then the BBS content got lowered and then eliminated ina about another week.

I should say I have only ever kept 3 cichlids: angels, discus and the nicholsi.
 
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