Help with Blue Acara breeding

[PDRed302]

After months of raising 7 Blue Acara together (growing them out) I finally had a pair form:

Blurry phone pic - Female left, Male right and a nice little batch of eggs!

After the first batch of eggs, I watched as the female decided to take over half the tank while protecting her eggs and then saw the male fertilize the eggs.

I took this as a sign that a pair had formed so I removed all of the other Acara, moving two of them to my display and trading the rest in. I wanted the pair to have as much room and as little stress as possible; but since I took out all of the other Acara the remaining pair has been very shy. The male has dulled out quite a bit and the female has lightend up a bit as well. The tank params are the same as they were before removing the other Acara, except for the fact that the water may be a bit cleaner now because of the reduced bio-load.

Since the pair has been shy after the move I went ahead and added some dithers to help them get a bit more comfortable in their tank: 10x Rummynose and the existing Albino BN Pleco. I know in the long run, if I want the pair to succesfully spawn I will most likeley have to remove the small pleco but for the mean time I am going to leave him in there as he was my tank janitor for the 7 Acara and did/does a good job.

My current parameters are as follows:
Temp: 80F
Nitrite: 0
Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm or lower
PH: 7.2

The pair has now been in th tank as it sits now for a little over a week I know that isn't that long but I still worry I messed something up when moving all of the other Acara.

Is there anyting that I need to change, anything I can do to help, or is it just a waiting game?

Thanks everyone, for any help/info.

This is my first time trying to spawn anything, I've had live bearers breed in community setups and my O's drop eggs all the time in my display tank but I have never activley tried to get a mated pair to spawn any advice is appreciated.

 

[Carpintis Keeper]

Don't worry about the reduction.just remove the pleco or it will feast on eggs.try to keep the pair even w/o dithers if they are not too aggressive towards each other or u can even get results in broken pair as mine did.earlier they used to spawn every 2 weeks when kept alone but now after dithers,they seem to have taken a break

 

[PDRed302]

Well the Acara's had picked off 3 of the Rummynose's (there were 3 runts) by the time I got home from work today. I figured there was a 50/50 shot that would happen with some if not all of them; hopefully the other 7 will make it. If the Acara do end up taking them all out, then I guess the Rummy's will just end up as overpriced feeders.

 

[PDRed302]

super fast update:

Once I changed the tank over to moonlight tonight I watched as my male Acara started chasing the female around the tank a bit. Not locking jaws or anything but little nips from behind. I had the same thing happen to a pair of Gourami and I ended up having to separate them.

Is this normal Spawning behavior for Acara or any similar CA/SA?

Or do I need to intervene?

I do not want to divide the tank, so that is not an option.

I have another male and female in my display tank, should I move the other female back over (trying to breed them guppy style) or maybe even switch out the males?

Not really quite sure what to do here...

I thought these 2 were a pair since they had already protected eggs together but since taking out the other fish they act and look quite a bit different.

Any experienced advice is appreciated, be it about Blue Acara or other CA/SA cichlid pairs.

 

[PDRed302]

I went ahead and added some new deco to change the scape up a bit; I also added 10x long fin blushing Tetra's. The Rummynose group has been cut down to 5 but has been holding steady for a few days now, so I have hope that the remaining 5 will now be left alone.

The pair has dropped their second set of eggs and I witnessed the male fertilizing them this evening; so fingers crossed!

Male on the left, female on the right. Bunches and bunches of eggs on the red rock, very well camouflaged, I almost didn't see them.

 

[PDRed302]

Well I've already got quite a bit of back story and info on this thread so I guess I will continue to update it; kind of like a breeding journal.

(if a Mod would be kind enough to change the title of the thread to just "Blue Acara Breeding" I'd appreciate it!)

I now have wrigglers/free swimmers; they have been moving them between 3 different nursery pits for the last 3 days, today its apparent that some of the wrigglers have turned into free swimmers and any of the group that travels off too far is picked off by the Tetras. I do not however plan to remove any of the tetras because the fry are going to be feeders anyways; be it for the tetras or my cichlids.

Temp and parameters are the same. I have stopped all salt treatments and have changed to just twice a week water changes.

For the first few days while the parents were moving the wrigglers I had to leave the tank lights on. Every time I turned off the lights or even ran the moonlights the female would viciously attack the male; last night however I was able to turn off the light.

Shot of the group:

Shot of a few of the stragglers:

Any info is still appreciated and if you're interested in breeding Blue Acara yourself, I am more than happy to answer any questions I can.

 

[PDRed302]

Well no reason to change the title of the thread now, it'd just be called something like: PDRed302's ever changing 40 breeder

The group of blushing Tetra's proved to be too much for the little Acara. Their spawn had dropped to only a handful of free swimmers by Tuesday morning and I decided that even though I originally told myself I wasn't going to move the tetras, that I am going to after all. I moved 5 to my display tank to see how they fair and surprisingly: so far so good. They are shoaling tightly and look very attractive, I'm not sure if a fish that size will make it in the long run in my large tank but I am going to give it a shot; if the original 5 make it 2 weeks they're all going in there.

I knew I wanted the Acara fry to be feeders for fish featured in my large tank and not just snacks for the the dithers in the breeding tank, so with numbers dwindling I was off to the LFS to look for some fish with a new plan in mind (nutty right?) like I need anything else.

I decided it was time to either get the extra Silver Dollars I wanted or a small group of Geo's (had geophagus tapajos in mind). I figured if I was going to be feeding the Acara fry to their tank mates, I might as well bulk up future display fish. It turns out that like I expected, the SD's I wanted wern't there, I have been searching for either more spotted or maybe even some wide bar but to no avail. After making 2 passes through the store I hadn't seen anything that interested me so I went to the counter to pick up my flake food refill (lfs makes the stuff) and b.s. with the owner a bit and let him know I was looking for some Geo's.

After a brief converstation, he let me know that he had some red humps in (Geophagus steindachneri), apparently I walked right by them because they were next to his African cichlid section and I wasn't paying much attention. They wern't what I originally had in mind but were a good deal so after looking up their requirements online (I love modern phone tech.) I ended up picking up a small group of 3 of them:

So far they seem to be getting along, the Acara chased them around for the better part of the rest of the day Tuesday but as of yesterday they seemed to be fine with one another. The free swimmers are of course now completley gone and the female Acara has returned to her normal colors (she was very virbrant when protecting her fry).

Right now stock is as follows:
2x Blue Acara (pair)
5x Rummynose
5x Blushing Longfin Tetra (soon to be removed)
1x Albino BN Pleco
3x Red Hump Geo's

Hopefully with just the 3 Geo's and the small shoal of Rummynose the Acara will be able to defend their spawn. I guess having a shoal of 10 hungry fish in there along with the Rummy's and the Pleco was just too much to defend against; you never know until you try I guess

I will be moving the Geo's over to my display once they have bulked up and are the better part of 3" or more. Maybe then I will be able to give my Acara pair a little peace, as I won't have room in my display to grow out anything else.

Thanks again for following along if you have been, I will update if the Acara spawn again, although even if they do, I don't expect too many fry to make it out of the tank alive because of their new tank mates.

 

[PDRed302]

During a recent series of unfortunate events I have had to temporarily move by Acara pair into a 20 tall. They came cover with the BN Pleco and the 4 remaining Rummynose (guess they were too big for the male Acara to eat). The 3 Geo's went into my display tank, it's earlier than I wanted to do it but they are fine.

Hopefully they won't have to be in this tank for more than a few weeks but the good news is, once they have moved back to their 40 breeder I will have a space to raise the fry for a while.

Shot of the couple with eggs:

Female in the front, male at the rear, eggs on the red rock on the bottom right, same as last time, very camo.

Instead of the pits that they dug last time in preparation for the wrigglers, they seem to have made 2 large piles of leaves; one on each side of the driftwood. I don't know if it is to block off floor space from the pleco or some type of protection, only time will tell I guess I do know that they are butting heads with the pleco in this tank; they didn't seem to notice each other in the 40 breeder but they have been battling back and forth ever since she dropped her eggs.