# Parents and Fry - Severums



## tburdock (Jul 7, 2008)

My red shoulders finally laid again. They are in a separate tank with only a couple tetras and a gourami. I've never left the fry with the parents for more than a couple days once free swimming. Just wondering if people have any experience in that area. Are the parents likely to eat the fry eventually, or will they leave them to grow? I usually remove the fry once they are free swimming.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

I had a pair of angels once raise fry all the way to adult-hood. For most substrate spawning ciclhids, the rule is to separate the parents when the fry stop obeying the signals to be a school and go all over the tank or when either parent acts like it'd like to spawn again, whichever comes first. Of course, its a lot harder to feed the fry in a large tank, so its common to take the fry as wigglers and raise them without parents. Watching a pair of cichlids shepherd a cloud around is really neat, so you should let them go longer once or twice just to see it.


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## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

i have never left the eggs for the parents to raise.pulling the eggs helps to keep the mortality rate down.my rotkiels are the exception to that rule.being F1's i left a spawn in with them to see if they would raise the fry.they did a pretty good job.but after a few weeks i pulled the fry.somewhere along the line;a bunch of them disappeared..i am going to let my reds and golds spawn just one more time and then i am going to sell them.go play with something else.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

I understand the thing with leaving them in the big tank is food. Its hard to get enough little, live food where the fry can get it without fouling the water. The parents will lead them all over the tank to graze on stuff in the algae, but you usually get tens of fry surviving instead of hundreds.


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## tburdock (Jul 7, 2008)

Thanks guys. I think I'm going to leave some in and take some out, just to see what happens with them.


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## tburdock (Jul 7, 2008)

I ended up taking out all the fry I could because they were disappearing at an alarming rate. I think there's about 40 that survived from that batch. I have three from an earlier batch and I think the parents are about to lay again! Here's a short video (horrible quality, sorry!) of the three (look carefully), the parents and the fry tank.



Let me know what you think!


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## mesapod (Aug 18, 2007)

their eyes are soo neat.


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## tburdock (Jul 7, 2008)

Yeah, they are so big in comparison to the rest of them.


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