# How Effective are Paretroplus at Parenting?



## notho2000 (Dec 8, 2012)

For years now, I've been hearing from many sources how inept the Paretroplus genus is at parenting, particularly of their eggs . It goes something like this:
Pair lays eggs - pair guards eggs - pair squabbles and eats eggs  
or
pair sees food coming and leaves eggs unattended whereupon they are eaten. :-? 
or
pair gets distracted, forgets to stay with eggs, and they get eaten. :roll: 
Well my experience with this genus ('maculatus', 'kieneri', and 'menerambo') tends to contradict these observations to a degree. I can see how these scenarios can happen, in that the Dambas are a high strung, rather nervous lot, incessantly squabbling, along with the strength of their pair bonds being somewhat suspect. But in my experience (at least within the last couple of years), they have been displaying exemplary capabilities in caring for ( at least) their eggs (that's only as far as I've allowed it to go).
They have tended to be very attentive to the egg plaque, with one parent (female) always close by, fanning them, and keeping a watchful eye while the other (male) is mostly doing periphery duty (does most of the chasing away). They work well as a team carrying out their tasks efficiently and choose spawning sites that are safe and secure for the young and easiest for them to defend. Can you tell I'm impressed? You betcha'. The funny thing is that any pair of CA or SA cichlid pretty much always display the utmost in parenting skills as a matter of course. No big deal for them. But for the Dambas, I suppose it's "a work in progress".

****I just went downstairs to pull the spawn, and the eggs are gone. Oh well, just disregard my positive comments.**** 

JUST KIDDING! They were still there and I've now moved them to a hatching tank.
Here's a video I took this morning of my pair of 'menarambo' guarding a spawn (occurred last evening) that supports some of my comments. This is their third spawn in 15 weeks. :thumb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 5-0bYjMXHc


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## Darkskies (Mar 17, 2012)

notho2000 said:


> For years now, I've been hearing from many sources how inept the Paretroplus genus is at parenting, particularly of their eggs . It goes something like this:
> Pair lays eggs - pair guards eggs - pair squabbles and eats eggs
> or
> pair sees food coming and leaves eggs unattended whereupon they are eaten. :-?
> ...


Why don't you just let them guard the spawn to full term? That way you'll be able to see if they make good parents or not..


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## notho2000 (Dec 8, 2012)

Darkskies said:


> Why don't you just let them guard the spawn to full term? That way you'll be able to see if they make good parents or not..


Well first, these fish are seasonal spawners, and at best, spawns are "far and few between". So when it comes to getting some fry, I'm not willing to take a chance leaving the spawn with the parents too long. The eggs take about 6 days to hatch and the eggs are very prone to fungusing so artificially hatching and raising them is,for me, the only way to go right now. Some day, (and if they don't beat the living c**p out of one another in the meantime), I just might leave the eggs in there and see how far they can take it. They have successfully guarded their spawn for up to 3 days before I pulled it. But these eggs never hatched but completely fungused.


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## Fogelhund (Dec 3, 2002)

I don't have first hand experience with these fish, but I've read quite a bit from others who have. Typically people do speak about the poor parenting of many of the Madagascar fishes in the aquarium, which could explain why we have the dire situation with the Ptychochromis insolitus.


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## GTZ (Apr 21, 2010)

Have you used methylene blue to combat fungus during the artificial hatching attempts?


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## notho2000 (Dec 8, 2012)

GTZ said:


> Have you used methylene blue to combat fungus during the artificial hatching attempts?


Yes, I use methylene blue at a quite high concentration.


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