# Cichlid Babies



## mschmoyer (Jan 1, 2009)

My cichlids are breeding in my 150g tank. Currently, there are 6+ babies in the tank itself (about 3 weeks old now) and 3 babies that I had caught in a net and put into a small baby tank. I added lots of "brush" on the bottom of the tank, the babies seem to be able to hide just fine. 

My baby tank is simply clamped on the inside of the big tank and is probably about one gallon in size with a little filter on it. I change water with water from the main tank every other day. I do have extra tanks I can use for baby tanks, but I am worried that my water parameters won't be correct. 

So my 3 choices are: 
1. Setup a 20g as a baby tank. 
2. Continue putting babies in the baby tank inside the big tank
3. Add more brush and hiding places and let nature sort it out. 

Last note is I have lots of smooth river rocks in the tank, so removing ALL the rocks to try to catch the babies will probably get them hurt or eaten...I caught 3 out of 12 and that was painful enough as it was. 

Last big question: When are the babies big enough to put back into the tank? I thought I heard "when they don't fit in the other fish's mouths" but I've seen my cichlids pick on small fish.

P.S. I wasn't using my 20g baby tank because the 4 platies in there just to keep it populated started having babies too!


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## Fishboydanny1 (Jun 13, 2008)

what type of cichlids do you have? if they're mbuna, you could probably let nature take its course and get a few babies from each spawn. if you have haps, then you'll have to seperate the babies, unless you get lucky and the adults arent interested.


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## mschmoyer (Jan 1, 2009)

Fishboydanny1 said:


> what type of cichlids do you have? if they're mbuna, you could probably let nature take its course and get a few babies from each spawn. if you have haps, then you'll have to seperate the babies, unless you get lucky and the adults arent interested.


Well I did manage to get 10-15 babies into a new 30g baby tank. There's probably 5-10 babies (probably more) still surviving well hidden in the big tank. 

There's probably three generations of babies at this point. The first generation is large enough to come out from hiding and not get eaten at this point.


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## kellenw (Mar 28, 2010)

What kind of cichlids?


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