What to do with the babies ???

[rdmpe]

I have a 55g tank with the following:

2 Red Zebra Cichlid (one yellow, one orange) (Pseudotropheus estherae), 3"
2 Yellow Lab (Labidochromis caeruleus), 1.5"
1 Kenyi Cichlid (Pseudotropheus lombardoi), 2"
1 Yellow Top Mbamba (Labidochromis sp "mbamba"), 2"
2 Blue Cobalt Cichlid (Metriaclima callainos), 2"
1 Red Top Afra Jaro (Cynotilapia afra - Jaro), 2"
2 Demasoni (Pseudotropheus demasoni), 1"

The yellow zebra is a female and has just released her second brood. The orange zebra is a male. I'm not sure if he is the papa though. How likely would cross breeding be with this mix of cichlids?

So far I have two that survived from the first brood and are now about 0.5" to 0.75" and I've spotted at least two of the most recent brood at about 0.25". The tank has a many many many rocks/crevices for the fish to live/hide in. I don't think I could catch any of the fish (babies or adults) without taking most of the rocks out (major PITA). Anyone know of any tricky way to catch these babies? A baited trap perhaps?

Thanks,
Randy

 

[Cichlid-Man]

A good chance it will be a cross breed unless you got the fish paired off before they were put in that tank.

A lot of malawi cross breed in tanks such as these

You will have to wait and see but your chances are high that its a cross breed....

Thats my opinion

 

[Brockway]

When I had to move my convicts, it was a real pain in the @ss. One was like less than 1", the girl. It took me hours to catch that thing. I eventually just turned out the rooms light, opened the door on the hood, and kept the net in my hand till she can out. Then I rushed her. Stupid plan, but I eventually caught her. Mine is pretty heavily decorated too, its really a kenyi tank, I just stupidly had the convicts in there before I checked them out here...

 

[wayne]

It's pretty likely. It doesn't matter what they did before they went in the tank Cichlid man , unlike New World cichlids, mbuna don't form pairs - the dominant male will mate with as many females as possible, continually.
Tip - you have a lot of pairs of cichlids - this doesn't work well for mbuna as the males are so hard on the females - try going for 1 male to 2 or 3 or more females.

 

[Somonas]

Crossbreeding red flags -
the blue cobalt will cross with the estherae. Male estheraes are blue in the wild
the Kennyi will probably go with the blue cobalt but that is unlikely because female kennyis are blue.
the mbamba is hard to say but I'd keep it away from the afra
Demasonis should be ok, they are dichromatic so it's likely you have 2 males. If you had a pair of demasonis everything else in the tank would be dead by now.

Unfortunately you have no way of knowing what will happen, crossbreeding wise, or where the fry are from. unless you actually watch them mate, or watch the tank and see who is courting who. The problem with non wild cichlids is that the ones in the general pet stores are interbred so far away from their wild counterparts they have no idea what to breed with. I would not stop at suggesting your yellow lab is the male from the red zebra female but this is highly unlikely.

My reccomendation would be to keep the fry (obviously) but don't sell them to petstores under "so and so" name. because you just don't know.