Fishy Surprises .: Cichlids: A Knowledge Base

By Sharon Barnett

Reprinted from Modern Aquarium magazine

One of the best perks of fishkeeping for me is the unexpected, like glancing up over my laptop at my ninety gallon mbuna tank and seeing a tiny fry dart out from under a rock for a quick bite..."Oh, hello! Who's your daddy? And for that matter, who's your momma?" Although I usually know which females are holding, and when to expect fry, there's always a secret spawner or two who surprise me.

A couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to witness the spawnings of two different species of catfish. Although I had read about the spawning activities of corydoras catfish, and had seen evidence of it in my planted fifty-five gallon(eggs all over the glass and plant leaves), I had never actually seen the display, and truth be told, I could not envision the female making "an envelope" of her ventral fins for holding and placing the eggs. So, as you may imagine, I was spellbound watching her clasp those fins together, and extruding the eggs into the "envelope".

By some odd coincidence, the Synodontis petricola colony in my mbuna tank got into the mood on the same day. I don't remember having read much about the spawning techniques of the petricola, though I did read somewhere that there was some question about whether or not they practice the same "cuckoo trick" as the Synodontis Multipunctatus. I did, once, see a video of some petricola spawning blithely, and obliviously right in the middle of an open area of a cichlid community tank, where the eggs were, of course, eaten as quickly as they were laid. What I witnessed in my tank, was two petricola swimming side by side, around and around, up and down, then stopping, and one of the fish(I assume the male) wrapping his body horizontally around the head/forepart of the other fish, quivering ever so slightly for a couple of seconds(I'm speculating that he was releasing milt at this time). I never actually saw the eggs falling, but I knew that they did, because all of the fish in the vicinity rushed in for the caviar! About a week later, I partially stripped a holding Metriaclima estherae of four tiny fry. Three of them were the expected bright orange color, but the fourth was pale with some dark markings and was considerably smaller than the other three. Could this be a petricola fry? Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to test that theory, as the odd-colored runt didn't survive.

Sometimes, I buy a plant and later notice a snail, or two (or two hundred), with an interesting shell and feel as though I've won a prize. This is why I am so taken with the idea of keeping a reef tank; aside from the breath-taking beauty of the tanks, I am enthralled with the idea of filling a tank with a pile of rocks, and watching what crops up over time. The two saltwater species that I would someday like to keep, are uniquely suited to a well-established reef tank--as a matter of fact, it's almost a requirement for them: the psychadelic-colored Mandarin goby(Pterosynchiropus splendidus[italics]), and the magical dwarf seahorse(Hippocampus zosterae). Both of these fish require large amounts of tiny live foods which can only be produced reliably in a large, established reef system(unless you spend your entire life doing nothing but producing live food for your fish).

There is one other saltwater fish that I must have at some time in my fishkeeping career--an algae blenny (Salarias fasciatus)! Once, at a Petland Discounts on Metropolitan Avenue, I saw for the first time, an algae blenny a.k.a. "lawnmower blenny" which rushed around the tank, darting in and out of the rocks, peeking at me, and which reminded me of nothing so much as a tiny alien(and now that I think of it, there was an alien on "Farscape" which could very well have been modeled after a blenny! ) I was so amused at the antics of this fish, that I found myself chuckling aloud, and very nearly clapping with glee (yes, I know--geeky!).