First spawn from Lamp ocellatus

[firestorm]

I am so excited. Tonight as I was cleaning my lamprologus ocellatus tank I saw 2 little babies in there. I am hoping I didn't end up sucking any babies up, but just the fact I know I have a pair of them, and they are spawning makes me ecstatic :eek: I just had to let everyone know, cause these guys are some of the fish I really wanted to spawn :spinny:

[CACAdmin]

Congrats! I guess the fry are quite tiny. Keep looking, there may be more.

[Melody]

Wonderful! Congrat's on the spawn. How long have you had them?

[Pamelajo]

Congrats!!!

[ChrissyFishy]

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:notworthy:

[firestorm]

Thanks guys, here are some pictures I managed to take. I have had them for about 5 months now, just waiting upon this exciting moment. I have only spotted 3 so far, but hey that's ok they spawned once so now I know they will spawn again ::D:

I'm guessing this is mom
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/DSC03973.jpg

And baby, I had to circle in red so you can spot him, and the substrate is sand so you can see just how tiny they are :)
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/DSC03979paintedit.jpg

[CACAdmin]

So tiny and so cute. Thanks for posting the pics.

[hp10BII]

Congrats! They look like little sticks with eyeballs. You can expect new broods of fry like clockwork now. Do you have a spawning pair or is there a harem?

[Lena]

What beautiful! I congratulate!!!!)
:Smile:

[firestorm]

Congrats! They look like little sticks with eyeballs. You can expect new broods of fry like clockwork now. Do you have a spawning pair or is there a harem?

Thanks guys. I used to have a trio of them, probably 2 males and 1 female. Then my most beautiful male jumped out of the tank and I was left with 2. At the time I thought I had 2 females because none of them looked like my other male I had, but I found out I must have 1 of each. I actually wouldn't mind keeping these fry and raising them adding them to my group, and creating a little colony of them. I will have to get a larger tank for them if doing this of course :) Here is a pic of my male I lost, he had more color in the end than in this pic which was taken shortly after I got them :(

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/DSC03028.jpg

[hp10BII]

Unfortunately, occies are not colony spawners like multies are. Once the female is ready for the next brood, she'll kick the little ones out. Mom & Dad are just as likely to kill/eat the older generation of fry when there is a new batch of eggs/fry. Dad is like a ticking time bomb, never knows when he may go berzerk and kill all fry and even his mate. If I really want to keep the occie fry, I remove the shell with all the free swimming fry and replace the shell with a new one. The fry are raised in a separate tank.

[hp10BII]

btw, where did you get the Zambian Blues? Not too common around here, I participated in a group buy to order mine online.

Here's a picture of my alpha Occie dad with some of his fry, just shortly before he preferred his youngin's as sardines. :frown:

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r295/hp10BII/P1000838.jpg

[CACAdmin]

Here's a picture of my alpha Occie dad with some of his fry, just shortly before he preferred his youngin's as sardines. :frown:

Great pic... what a beautiful fish! Such a shame that he suddenly decided the fry would be tasty. :frown:

[firestorm]

He is very pretty :yes:

At least I got the 3 babies out of the tank and into a 3.5 gallon by themselves. I got my group of them from a mail order for Spencer Jacks in Winnipeg. I have never seen any occies at any LFS ever before here in the last year. But I have seen multies. I honestly like the looks of the occies better though, they are a little more unique looking. My little fry are feasting on golden pearls and crushed NLS grow, hopefully they don't take too long to grow lol.

[hp10BII]

He is very pretty :yes:

At least I got the 3 babies out of the tank and into a 3.5 gallon by themselves. I got my group of them from a mail order for Spencer Jacks in Winnipeg. I have never seen any occies at any LFS ever before here in the last year. But I have seen multies. I honestly like the looks of the occies better though, they are a little more unique looking. My little fry are feasting on golden pearls and crushed NLS grow, hopefully they don't take too long to grow lol.

Thanks for the compliments, I've since sold him to someone that wanted him in their African community tank with bigger fish, apparently he's doing really well and staked out his territory. He's just a mean son of a gun that wanted the whole tank to himself, drove off all his mates and other occies. I'm growing out juveniles for hopefully a more tempermental mate.

Small world, I got my Zambian Blues from Spencer Jacks too. In my last order, I wanted gold occies, they were on hold in a holding tank and his assistant dumped bigger fish in the same tank. I got a call that my order was eaten. :realmad:

I've never seen occies locally except from private breeders. Their character will drive you crazy or have you glued to their tank, that's for sure. Occies are slow growing, it took my broods about 9 months to get to an inch size. Good luck with yours.

What other tanganyikan's do you have?

[firestorm]

Yeah they are mean little buggers aren't they :twitcy: I bet they can hold their own with larger fish. I was tempted to put them in my 45 gallon tang tank once I get the frontosa's out of there. My fronts have snacked on smaller fish before, so I don't want to risk it. For tangs they are now all in one tank and they are, 2 mpimbwe fronts, 1 burundi front, 2 calvus, 4 julidochromis transcriptus, 2 neolamp brichardi, and 6 synodontis petricola. Oh yeah and I have 2 tropheus duboisi in my 90 gallon mbuna tank, but they grew up with them so I decided that tank was best for them.

I wonder if my occies would make good tank mates for the rest of them, or maybe I will just wait and grow the juvies out and try them in that tank. It is better to lose F2's than my original F1 breeding pair. I once had a gold occie but I didn't want her to end up cross breeding with my blues so I sold her. Here is a picture of her with one of my blue's behind her lol

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/DSC03506.jpg

[hp10BII]

Neat pic, looks like gold occie is swimming for her life!

I'm sure your fronts are looking forward to the day that you're offering your occies to them, I wouldn't do it either. Nice collection of tangs, I'm thinking of a tang community which are somewhat shellie friendly (but probably wouldn't be fry friendly), if I'm lucky breeding pairs or trios of a. calvus. j. transcriptus, and cyps.

[Melody]

Some stunning fish pictures! Thanks for posting them.:Smile:

[firestorm]

Neat pic, looks like gold occie is swimming for her life!

I'm sure your fronts are looking forward to the day that you're offering your occies to them, I wouldn't do it either. Nice collection of tangs, I'm thinking of a tang community which are somewhat shellie friendly (but probably wouldn't be fry friendly), if I'm lucky breeding pairs or trios of a. calvus. j. transcriptus, and cyps.

Actually the gold occie is displaying for the other one. The other one was probably more afraid of her than she was of him lol. Thanks guys, I really love these little guys to bits. They are definitely a joy to keep. And I don't think they will be going into the 45 while the fronts are still in there, don't feel like giving them and occie snack anytime soon :Smile:

[tiga]

beautiful fish tons of atitude I like the fact that when you clean the tank they atack your hand