# Texas Cichlid Eggs!!!!!



## Hezett (Jan 19, 2009)

So thanks to you kind people's experience and abilities to sex texas cichlids, you determined that my fish is a male. So i ran out and based on the information you gave me about sexing them i got what i was pretty darn sure was a female (Despite the pet store employees' advice that he thought it was a male)
It took a few days for the male to warm up to the female; he is very very large, but after a day or so the new girl decided that he wasnt going to harm her (he has been pretty aggressive with stuff so this was surprising as she is just a baby and he is a few years old now), and she came out of the rock set up we have and she started pursuing HIM flirtatiously. every time he would start chasing her gently,  , she would squiggle away and hide in her stone apartment which he couldnt get his face into.
she shook her head a lot and never leaves his side... but after a week we didn't really think it was going anywhere, probably because he was too big for her or she was just too little for him.
So my boyfriend started taking the rocks out to put into another tank for some new smaller fish we got who needed them more, now that the texans have bonded....
upon taking out one of the last rocks, i heard a very fearsome "oooooohHHHHH NNNNoooooooooo"
and i said "what!" and he was quiet for a moment while putting the rocks back INTO the tank...
then he said that there were eggs and he squished some of them when he picked up the rock....
he didn't squish them all but he feels really really really really bad; the male texas cichlid is HIS favorite fish and the first one that was here before any of the others.
It was funny and devastating to see the aftermath. the female aggressively took it out on the male, pummelling him with her mouth all over his body... but it had no affect. she blamed him entirely for this. we thought HE might freak out and take it out on her, but hes pretty darn whipped at this point, making it quite the thing to see (though we of course woud never repeat this mistake )

http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r80/ ... G_0012.jpg 
So they kind of look like they're going to breed again. they are still fanning the eggs that are still there... does anyone know how fragile eggs are? I'm guessing extremely so. and do they breed again immediately if the first batch dont work?


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## Hezett (Jan 19, 2009)

all the eggs are gone.


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## StillaZilla (Aug 22, 2008)

So sorry to hear that. Hope next time works. Keep us informed.


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## Hezett (Jan 19, 2009)

So i woke up to see my female texas cichlid laying eggs all over the top of a rock in my tank today.
The problem is that my male seems to be doing absolutely nothing. She seems annoyed with him.
I could be interpreting this entirely wrong because up until today they've been very lovey with each other. 
is it possible that he will not fertilize the eggs for any reason?
or did i miss it happening?


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## Hezett (Jan 19, 2009)

there are fry in my tank  little wigglers, not freeswimmers. a bunch of the eggs turned white over the past 48 hours, we didn't know if houstin had actually fertilized them, and it wasnt looking good. it looked like she was eating the bad eggs, but i knew it was possible that that wasnt the entire story  upon peering closer i saw the female suck on the egg pile 3 times, swim into the little cranny they have, and spit out the... bad eggs? no, babies!  she's moved all of the survivors. we saw the male eating them (he was just sitting in the cranny, not helping move them, NOT spitting the babies back out at all, so we took him out. she was also beating his face every time she returned with more babies just to find there were less and less babies each time (she is very small compared to him so it's sort of funny because he just puts up with it all) so we moved him out. she is very diligently taking care of everything herself; she certainly seems to be a very dedicated mother so far


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