Stripping African Cichlids Video

[crisycrunch]

I did a step by step instructional video on stripping cichlids.  Hopes this helps some of you out that haven't done it before
 

 

[Ryan10]

Great video. 

 

[MBOU]

Its very useful I had to learn the hard way by guessing, didn't have access to internet then really but I figured pretty much same technique. Though I tended to use a cocktail stick to open the females mouth because I can be a tad clumsy and have useless fat fingers lol. Once mouth is open I put finger on each cheek and it held her mouth open rather than holding onto her lips. It also allowed me to swim her through the water to get the fry to swim out, it worked out much quicker that way for me as I found some females were really stubborn!
 
I also never bothered with egg tumbler, I skipped that stage and straight onto a rearing tank very much like her described except I wouldn't offer them food until they had absorbed their egg sac.
 
I also fed them nauplii of baby brine shrimp or rotifers when I could but mostly I got them only flake asap and used a mix of tetra pro colour and tetra pro veg/algae as these flakes are really easy to grind into a powder, are high in protein and also the algae they would likely be grazing on.

 

[Ellieabbott4]

I'm new to malawi and yesterday decided it was time to strip my kingsizei female, as soon as I caught her in the net she spat all the fry out, luckily they all sank to the bottom if the net and didn't escape. They still have their egg sacks so I think I was a bit to keen to strip her but they are wriggling around nicely in the breeding trap. I'm excited to raise my first lot of fry, there is 22 altogether

 

[crisycrunch]

Great video. 

 
Thank you
 

Its very useful

I had to learn the hard way by guessing, didn't have access to internet then really but I figured pretty much same technique. Though I tended to use a cocktail stick to open the females mouth because I can be a tad clumsy and have useless fat fingers lol. Once mouth is open I put finger on each cheek and it held her mouth open rather than holding onto her lips. It also allowed me to swim her through the water to get the fry to swim out, it worked out much quicker that way for me as I found some females were really stubborn!
 
I also never bothered with egg tumbler, I skipped that stage and straight onto a rearing tank very much like her described except I wouldn't offer them food until they had absorbed their egg sac.
 
I also fed them nauplii of baby brine shrimp or rotifers when I could but mostly I got them only flake asap and used a mix of tetra pro colour and tetra pro veg/algae as these flakes are really easy to grind into a powder, are high in protein and also the algae they would likely be grazing on.

 
Good points...its definitly an art that takes perfecting.  Your babies must have done well on the varied diet also. I started using tumblers when I started running out of tank space and was stripping many species at the same time.  The tumbler works as a great holding tank* until the fry can be mixed with eachother.

I'm new to malawi and yesterday decided it was time to strip my kingsizei female, as soon as I caught her in the net she spat all the fry out, luckily they all sank to the bottom if the net and didn't escape. They still have their egg sacks so I think I was a bit to keen to strip her but they are wriggling around nicely in the breeding trap. I'm excited to raise my first lot of fry, there is 22 altogether

 
Its the nice the female did the job for you lol.  Probably the first time she had carried also....yeah if the wigglers can move they be fine in the breeding trap until they mature....good luck with them

 

[MBOU]

I had someone dump about 50 wrigglers on me of two species after they stripped two emaciated females but then decided they didn't want to raise them or kill them and knew I kept fish so turned up with two egg cups of wrigglers! I took them in but had nowhere to put them so I got inventive lol.
 
I have a chameleon and so have crickets and I used two of the plastic cricket boxes and suckers from spare heaters that I fixed to the tubs, submerged tubs in a tank, put the babies in and put lid on and then used suckers to stick to front glass. It worked as well!