125 Gallon Cichlid Breeding Help!

thelaw

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hey i am getting a 125 gallon tank soon and i want to try to breed some type of "larger" cichlid in it i want a type of cichlid that get 12+ ins and i can make a bit of money off it and it needs to be a south or central american cichlid i was think of trying to breed my jaguar cichlid in it but i dont think this tank is big enough for that so here is a list of cichlids that i want to try and breed
 
trimac cichlid
 
oscar cichlid
 
jaguar cichlid
 
hoga cichlid
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
pleas help and tell me what one will work in a 125 gallon tank and give me some ideas on other types of cichlid i could breed in that size tank thanks :)   
 
Sorry to burst your bubble but breeding fish costs you more money than you make, you need to run more than one tank, one for the pair to spawn and raise fry to a certain size, then you need a grow out tank to get the fry to selling size, some cichlids you can end up with 100+ fry so may need more than one grow out tank.
 
 
unless you have an outlet for the fry you cannot rely on selling them to the public, thinking of selling them to a shop you need to take into account the massive discounts shops get on fish and what they would offer you for yours.
 
An example for you, a few years ago I bred thorichthys elliotti, quite rare and still hard to find now, in the shops at the time they were fetching prices between £8-£15, I was offered by shops less than 10p/fish, which was nothing to do with the quality of my fish.
 
As Star mentioned it is very hard to make money from breeding fish. Especially to sell to shops.
 
Your other issue is if you breed just big cichlids some shops wont take them because of how hard they can then be to sell on. You would be better finding some rarer small to mid sized cichlids to breed which you could sell onto hobbiests directly for a better price.
 
http://www.tangledupincichlids.com/
 
since your in the US you could get fish from Jeff Rapps to breed.
 
From your list though -
 
Trimac - if you can find a true strain, maybe, but not an overly popular fish and hard to breed due to aggression.
Oscar - no, shops will be inundated
Jaguar - no, again shops will already be inundated
Hoga - if you mean Hogaboomarous, this is your best option on that list, they are quite rare and are not overly aggressive though Ive not kept them.
 
Wills
 
star4 said:
Sorry to burst your bubble but breeding fish costs you more money than you make, you need to run more than one tank, one for the pair to spawn and raise fry to a certain size, then you need a grow out tank to get the fry to selling size, some cichlids you can end up with 100+ fry so may need more than one grow out tank.
 
 
unless you have an outlet for the fry you cannot rely on selling them to the public, thinking of selling them to a shop you need to take into account the massive discounts shops get on fish and what they would offer you for yours.
 
An example for you, a few years ago I bred thorichthys elliotti, quite rare and still hard to find now, in the shops at the time they were fetching prices between £8-£15, I was offered by shops less than 10p/fish, which was nothing to do with the quality of my fish.
i am not just doing this for money i want to do this for the fun of it and just for the fact i want to try and breed fish
Wills said:
As Star mentioned it is very hard to make money from breeding fish. Especially to sell to shops.
 
Your other issue is if you breed just big cichlids some shops wont take them because of how hard they can then be to sell on. You would be better finding some rarer small to mid sized cichlids to breed which you could sell onto hobbiests directly for a better price.
 
http://www.tangledupincichlids.com/
 
since your in the US you could get fish from Jeff Rapps to breed.
 
From your list though -
 
Trimac - if you can find a true strain, maybe, but not an overly popular fish and hard to breed due to aggression.
Oscar - no, shops will be inundated
Jaguar - no, again shops will already be inundated
Hoga - if you mean Hogaboomarous, this is your best option on that list, they are quite rare and are not overly aggressive though Ive not kept them.
 
Wills
im not going to just do this for the money and i am not going to wast a 125 gallon tank on small cichlids and the oscars i want to try i plan to get a pair of wild ones but ya could a jaguar cichlid pair live in one?
 
While it is enjoyable breeding fish (been there done that) you do have to remember you cannot keep all the fry, what Wills was pointing out was your choices are fish that you want to breed are more difficult to get rid of either to the public or to shops. Oscars grow at a very fast rate, once they are big enough to leave their parents do you have the facilities to grow them on?, ie can you house 100+ 2-3" oscars while you are waiting for them to sell, giving it can take a while to shift this amount of fish you could end up with them for months and they can grow 1"/ month. Its not just a case of needing one big tank.
 
Even going for smaller rarer fish is difficult, as I mentioned I bred Elliotti, I had 3 grow on tanks running at one point before virtually giving them away, the same with rotkeil serverums, I had a list of people wanting a rotkeil, yet by the time they were big enough to sell many people had changed their minds, I ended up taking 50+ rotkeils to a shop (over 50 miles away) and getting 2 true parrots in exchange for them and the shop then sold them at £10 each (bitter pill to swallow that, especially when I was asked if I had any more!) another rarer fish I have bred is the auquidens metae, these are like rocking horse manure to get hold of, and I ended up having to keep some of the fry from the last batch due to the lack of interest and I only had a small batch.
 
It maybe worth checking with any local aquatic clubs/organisations to see if they have fish auctions (some do here in the uk) and check out other outlets for moving your fry on - this was my failing relying on selling to the general public and collecting from my home, this is another thing do you want people coming to your house to collect one fish at a time?
 
It is very rewarding breeding fish, but its not a money maker, it takes a lot of time and effort. Also with breeding the more aggressive cichlids you also need to be prepared for the fact they may fall out. I have spend the last 4 years raising some true parrot cichlids (none related) in the hope of breeding them, sadly the male has rejected the female in the last couple of months after living together in peace for the last 4 years and badly beaten her, so they have had to be separated into two different tank. The point I am trying to make with this is you could buy a "breeding pair" and for some reason, change of tank or whatever they suddenly turn on each other.  All I did with my pair was move them to another tank, the same size with the wood and rock they were "cleaning" and that was it he went nuts and tried to kill her.  So 4 years down the drain and no true parrot fry for me.
 
With the fish you are looking at you would need to either have a spare tanks (remember you need tanks for the fry) or a tank divider just in case of problems like I have experienced with my True Parrots else you end up with a dead fish.
 
I am not trying to put you off, just offering some personal experience in the difficulties of breeding cichlids.
 
star4 said:
While it is enjoyable breeding fish (been there done that) you do have to remember you cannot keep all the fry, what Wills was pointing out was your choices are fish that you want to breed are more difficult to get rid of either to the public or to shops. Oscars grow at a very fast rate, once they are big enough to leave their parents do you have the facilities to grow them on?, ie can you house 100+ 2-3" oscars while you are waiting for them to sell, giving it can take a while to shift this amount of fish you could end up with them for months and they can grow 1"/ month. Its not just a case of needing one big tank.
 
Even going for smaller rarer fish is difficult, as I mentioned I bred Elliotti, I had 3 grow on tanks running at one point before virtually giving them away, the same with rotkeil serverums, I had a list of people wanting a rotkeil, yet by the time they were big enough to sell many people had changed their minds, I ended up taking 50+ rotkeils to a shop (over 50 miles away) and getting 2 true parrots in exchange for them and the shop then sold them at £10 each (bitter pill to swallow that, especially when I was asked if I had any more!) another rarer fish I have bred is the auquidens metae, these are like rocking horse manure to get hold of, and I ended up having to keep some of the fry from the last batch due to the lack of interest and I only had a small batch.
 
It maybe worth checking with any local aquatic clubs/organisations to see if they have fish auctions (some do here in the uk) and check out other outlets for moving your fry on - this was my failing relying on selling to the general public and collecting from my home, this is another thing do you want people coming to your house to collect one fish at a time?
 
It is very rewarding breeding fish, but its not a money maker, it takes a lot of time and effort. Also with breeding the more aggressive cichlids you also need to be prepared for the fact they may fall out. I have spend the last 4 years raising some true parrot cichlids (none related) in the hope of breeding them, sadly the male has rejected the female in the last couple of months after living together in peace for the last 4 years and badly beaten her, so they have had to be separated into two different tank. The point I am trying to make with this is you could buy a "breeding pair" and for some reason, change of tank or whatever they suddenly turn on each other.  All I did with my pair was move them to another tank, the same size with the wood and rock they were "cleaning" and that was it he went nuts and tried to kill her.  So 4 years down the drain and no true parrot fry for me.
 
With the fish you are looking at you would need to either have a spare tanks (remember you need tanks for the fry) or a tank divider just in case of problems like I have experienced with my True Parrots else you end up with a dead fish.
 
I am not trying to put you off, just offering some personal experience in the difficulties of breeding cichlids.
ok thanks for all the info maybe i will do something else could a wild oscar a green terror or a jack dempsey  and a alligator pleco live in a 125 gallon tank?
 
Sorry I didn't mean to put you off breeding, but I thought it better you be told the possible problems before getting into bother :)
 
Your new plan seems much better :) you could get all 3 (oscar, JD & GT) as juvi's and grow them on together see which get on the best as it is almost impossible to say yes a JD and oscar get on, because some dont it does depend on the fish, I have only briefly had a green terror and it was mean.
 
When I was saying smaller I didnt mean like dwarfs just not the giants your on about like the Jags which can get to 16 inches... A group of Geophagus or Satanoperca could be good, unusual fish in a lot of shops, groups produce lots of fry, very interesting and attractive fish and low likely hood of males killing females as the aggression will be spread out through the group.
 
Just something to think about maybe?
 
Wills
 

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