Anyone ever had any luck breeding Parachromis dovii? I have bred the Dovii Cichlid on a few occassions and I am just curious to hear if anyone did anything special to get them to breed? Or did they decide to do it without any help/manipulation from you?
Tricks to breeding dovii? Or just natural?
- Thread starter Caveman
- Start date
The very first time I bred P. dovii was in a 125 gallon tank. The male was roughly 4" and female was 3". I had them in a grow out community with an assortment of similarly sized Central and South American Cichlids such as Trimaculatus, Umbriferus, Grammodes and Crenicichla sp. "Venezuela". When I introduced the smaller female to the much heavier thicker built male they started to immediately jaw lock. At the time I thought they were sparring to see who would be the dominant dovii. This continued for about one week then the two settled down and stayed to there own parts of the tank. One morning when I went into the kitchen to feed them I noticed that one of my larger Umbriferus had been completely descaled and was near death. So I took out the Umbriferus and moved it to a temporary quarantine tank to let it heal its wounds. So off I went to school and upon my return home I go to the tank and that every single fish was sitting in the upper corner of the tank opposite of the male dovii and they were all severly thrashed. I didnt see the female dovii so I began moving decorations around in the tank to see if she was hiding. When I got to the 5" clay pot the male Dovii immediately came from my hand. I was wondering what he was doing since usually when I put my hand in the tank he darted to the opposite side. So I take my hand out and flip over the clay pot with my 10" net and to my suprised the little female dovii is under it guarding around 150-200 eggs and it looked like 70% of them were fertile. I then moved the female and the male Dovii to there own tank to raise the eggs. That pair I sold to a freind of mine who still has them, now they are like 14" and 9" each and continuously spawn for him once a month.
Breeding dovii is pretty easy. I do it on a regular basis. I basically manipulate water conditions slightly and they do the rest. A simple increase in temperature and increase in partial water changes seems to condition mine to breed. I also mix the diet up from Hikari pellets, to frozen krill, live red worms, and that is honestly all I do. I give them caves/flat stones to spawn on and bang, one day I wake up with 400 eggs and two very mad parents. Mine are probably male length 11" and female is probably about 6.5" now. They are ok parents, not terribly aggressive if you put your hand in the tank but will attack glass/gravel cleaners. I hope as they get larger they get more aggressive.
