Multi sex life [Archive] - Cichlid Forums

jonah

10-23-2002, 09:32 PM

Anyone familiar with Neolamprologus multifasciatus spawning? Is there any behavior that will tip me off, or do I just hope I'll see tiny multi's in the tank someday? I've got females guarding their shells pretty aggressively, but they don't stay in the shells constantly. I've also seen the females swim in front of the males wiggling their bodies in front of them. They'll jump out in front of the males, flexing their bodies back and forth. :?

BadAndy

10-24-2002, 07:09 AM

The first thing I noticed was that the female's colors get deeper. The stripes on their bodies become really pronounced. I'm not sure what color they become because I am half color-blind. I want to say the stripes are brown or rust colored but I'm not really sure. Anyway, the first time my multi's spawned I had no idea until I saw eyes swimming in one of my shells. I read that it will take 3 weeks before you see the eyes in the shells of your multi. Since then I've noticed a pattern. My females turn on their lovelights (their bright colors) and pose for the male above their chosen shell (fins out and completely still - sometimes I think they bat their eyes). If the male shows no interest (usually he doesn't) then they swim over to him and nip him on his ?anal fin? (not sure if it is his anal fin, but its on the bottom of him and near his tail). The male chases the female - she leads him to her shell where she stops and slightly quivers before posing for him again. If the male follows her all the way to her shell then i know they've got Barry White playing on their stereo, otherwise the male will give up chase half way. Sometimes my females nip the male even whey they are not showing their colors. If the female's shell is big enough then the two fish will go in together (they don't like me to watch - its private) or if they shell isn't big enough for both of them then the female will go in the shell and then the male will go in the shell (that's when the male looks at me and says- Dude, don't you have something better to do? Do you know how tough it is to perform when someone is watching you? Pervert!).

Well, that's about all I noticed. It basically coincides with everything I've read about multi mating except for the nipping part- I don't remember ever reading that but it was something that I noticed. Who knows? maybe I read it and think it was something I just noticed.

Good luck with them. Getting them to mate is a no brainer as i am an idiot and they mated for me. I just put lots of shells in the tank with the male and 2 females and pretty soon they populated the whole tank. You can see my prolific multi's at cichlidgallery.com I have a couple of pictures there. The pictures don't show how many fry I've got but I've got a lot.

BadAndy