# Help! Need fry ID. Can one batch have multiple fathers?



## rpd1113 (Jun 7, 2015)

Hey guys posted a few times with cichlid ID questions, thanks for all the great advice! Really helped. Here's another one for you. So I have a big African cichlid tank (125g) mostly male peacocks and haps. I have a few females but not many. Well once in a while nature takes its course and one will pop up pregnant... Know I know that cichlids can and will hybridize with other cichlids and I know not to sell and introduce low quality individuals back into the hobby. But honestly the breeding aspect of cichlids is one of the things that truly intrigues me about the cichlid hobby, especially when I have these weird little anomalies that don't seems to make sense?! So here goes.. I have a known pair of tangerine tigers that readily breed. They have probably mated successfully 6 to 7 times. The fry always look identical. Same color pattern, general size etc.. Well this new batch is only days old but already something seems off. All but 2 of the cichlid fry in the batch look the same as usual. But these other two are growing at a notably faster rate,Are brownish with some yellow, versus the black and silver of the haps. They even have the vertical bars like most aulonocara species and not the lateral lines like the Tigers. Well the biggest of the bunch jumped out of the fry trap and got sucked in the filter... Which sucks because he was growing super fast and looked really cool. He was already 3x the size of all his clutch mates! Never experienced anything like that. But I still have one of the strange little guys left. Take a look. Any ideas how this can happen? Can 2 males of 2 different species fertilize the same female at the same time? Can this really just be a hybrid showing some distant ancestory? This one doesn't even behave the same! It hangs out alone up by the filter and all the others school by this one rock. I'm very excited to observe him grow and change. Very cool to me! But still really curious if anyone knows more than me about this can enlighten me! Sorry for the long bible! Thanks in advance


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## Fogelhund (Dec 3, 2002)

Yes, multiple males can fertilize a spawn. Here is the problem... some of these hybrids could look like the mother too... and you won't know. The unfortunate thing is that you have to assume all the fry in this spawn are hybrids.

It is also possible that your fish are hybrids, and this is a throwback as you suggest. That wouldn't be my first conclusion though.


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