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The white foam is a piece of Polyfilter, used to absorb ammonia produced by the fish. I fast my fish for 24 hours before shipping, but always include Polyfilter as extra insurance.

You can sell the fry on one of the online auction sites, such as Aquabid. I’ve been selling dwarf cichlids online for years and usually make back my initial investment and then some.

I know I’m dating myself, but we had a Metaframe Bubble-up air powered HOB filter in the early seventies. Instead of filter floss we had glass wool.

I’ve been working with A. thomasi for years. It’s fairly easy to sex them when they’re fully grown. Males are larger then females, with much more of the violet spangling on their sides.

If I were in Sri Lanka I’d concentrate on keeping and breeding Malpulutta kretseri, which is no longer being exported. Just sayin’.

My water is GH >1<, pH 6.8, 31 ppm TDS straight out of the tap, but the species is pretty flexible when it comes to spawning parameters.

I usually get a fairly even sex ratio in my broods. With six you should end up with at least one pair.

One of my all time favorite species. Once they start breeding the don’t stop. The one in your pic looks like a young male. The black spots below the dorsal fin indicate that it’s the Guinea morph. Here’s a picture of my three year old male.

P. pulcher is a very variable species. Some males have spots on their tails, some don’t. There’s also a super red morph. I’ve had microworm cultures going for over ten years, and I hatch out BBS whenever I need them, which is always, since I always have some sort of fry growing out.

Those are common kribs, Pelvicachromis pulcher. The parents are escorting their babies around the tank in search of food. I start my krib fry on microworms, switching to BBS a week later.

Pachypanchax species commonly live for over five years. I’ve had a pair of P. patriciae for six years now. They’re very curious, outgoing and extremely hardy. They produce large eggs, and the fry are easy to raise.

I’m partial to Laetacara and Dicrossus myself.

They were showing up in shops here in NYC a decade ago. Very attractive with interesting behavior, but mine would only eat live or frozen food. Unfortunately, they’re virtually impossible to breed in captivity.

I accidentally crossed Corydoras sterbai with C. metae. The offspring looked like metae with some black markings on their sides and the orange ventral fin spines of sterbai.

I keep 5 or 6 adults and many fry and sub-adults in a 10 gallon full of Java moss. There is little to no squabbling among the adults, and a good number of youngsters survive to adulthood. The breeding pair cease to produce when the number of fish in the tank grows too large, which is the signal...

I’ve had a colony of Nannacara anomala going for many years. Males will occasionally take on the female’s brood care coloration and assist in caring for the fry.

They’re also known as the Brilliant Rasbora.

It’s a male. Female dwarf gouramis are much less colorful. Unfortunately, they’re almost never found in shops, and most people have never even encountered them before. They’ll look for the slightest difference in fin length and pronounce the one with the shorter fins to be a female when in fact...

How old is your fish? Annual killifish don’t live very long.

The fish that are sold as Red Robin Gouramis are a line bred red variety of Trichogaster labiosa. Labiosa and chuna don’t hybridize. If you could provide a picture of the mystery gourami I’ll be able to give you a definite ID.

I’d occasionally find labiosa sold as fasciata, but fasciata seems to have disappeared from shops as well.

Wild-type dwarf gouramis have been almost totally replaced by solid red or blue line-bred variants. Decades ago wild type dwarfs were the only kind available, and, at least around here, they were only sold as m/f pairs. I haven’t seen wild-type thicklip gouramis being offered anywhere for at...

One of my N. lacortei males. Black N. palmeri occasionally show up in broods of standard colored fish.

N. beckfordi males spar constantly; that’s basically what they do. They’re the ones with blue tips on their ventral fins, even when not fully colored up. If the tank is densely planted, especially with Java moss, some fry will occasionally grow up alongside the adults.

Sound like you have black Nematobrycon palmeri and ”Super Blue” Inpaichtys kerri. My super blue males looked black with a blue sheen most of the time. Wild-type kerri are much more attractive IMHO.

Photos?

The coloration plus the body proportions tell me that it’s definitely a male. Unfortunately, the “breeding tube” looks more like a prolapse.

I’ve kept and bred the species for many years but have never observed that particular behavior. Are there enough hides in the tank for the smaller fish to stay out of the larger one’s way?

Black Emperors are also Nematobrycon palmeri, just a different color morph, so there shouldn’t be a problem with them getting along. My standard Emperors would occasionally produce black offspring. I assume the Blue Emperors to be Inpaicthys kerri, which don’t grow as large as the Nematobrycon.

Mine have been taking Bug Bites Tropical Flakes from the start. I feed that in the morning and in the evening they get either Grindal worms, frozen spirulina brine shrimp, frozen cyclops or BBS. I avoid black or bloodworms as I’ve found that they can cause bloat.

I had Apistogramma ortegai Papagei back in 2020. They bred for me right away, but 100% of the offspring were males. I later found out that higher temperatures can lead to a preponderance of males. I recently orderd a new pair to try and have another go at lower temps, but instead I was sent a...

Welcome! A. ortegai is one of my favorite apistos, as you can probably tell by my avatar.

Most likely a pair. The fins on my L. araguaiae were pretty much the same length in both sexes, but the males grew quite a bit larger, and with time much chunkier, than the females.