Breeding petricolas

well i have quite a few petricolas and i notice a couple of the bigger ones have swollen bellys, is this a sign for eggs? they are not over fed they have to compete with a few haps before the food even hits the floor. Whats my next step, its late and im not leaving home tonight to pick up anything special like a clay pot, dish, and marbles. How long does it take before they drop the eggs? im a mouthbrooder guy, so any help is appreciated.

pm jojo. he had them breed a bunch but i think he had to use marbles for them.

[b]Aaron, i will bring you a CD for you at Kens Saturday meeting... it will have all the info i found on breeding petricolas... even thou nothing has worked for me yet! lol

oh, the fat bellies are the females.... slim ones are the guys![/b]

lol good deal len, looking forward to it. i'll hit jojo up for some pointer also.

Just make sure you get black marbles. Everyone that I have talked to that has bred them says black or very dark.

If you have them in with breeding haps you may get some of the cat eggs held by the haps, They can be coo-coo breeders, IE; the coo-coo bird lays its eggs in other birds nests so that they are taken care of by another bird.

Holey Rock of Texas wrote:

pm jojo. he had them breed a bunch but i think he had to use marbles for them.

I dont think Jojo did. Those Cats he had came from Cali.

KMX wrote:

Holey Rock of Texas wrote:

pm jojo. he had them breed a bunch but i think he had to use marbles for them.

I dont think Jojo did. Those Cats he had came from Cali.

The only successful breeding information that I have found is the marble one. I heard the mouthbrooding process has a harder much harder success rate.

KMX wrote:

Holey Rock of Texas wrote:

pm jojo. he had them breed a bunch but i think he had to use marbles for them.

I dont think Jojo did. Those Cats he had came from Cali.

Yes I have bred the wild caught petricolas I got from Peter Rubin in the past. It was my friend in California that inspires me to breed them upon seeing his setup on one of my biz trip over there.

I have no patience though for raising them. To much work.
Pyrex bowls with 2-3 inch marbles topped with strawberry pots is a
good set-up. I have actaully raised some babies but for all the work done I don't think it's really worth it. Leleupis and comps/calvus are the same.
You spend more money raising them just to sell them for $5 a piece.

Meanwhile my friend in Cali does this for a living (I don't) and to help him I started helping him move his fish.

Okay that is what I think Ive done ;-)

Yeah That's why the Cats sell for a good amount b/c it's not easy to get them going and then it takes time to get them to a decent size

...

Vman, miltis are the parasitic mouth brooders, not egg scatters.

I breed the petricolas in a large butter bowl about half full of marbles. Cut a round hole in the lid for them to move in and out of it. You will see fat females and then the males fratically chasing them around the tank. They will go round and round in the bowl and spawn. Eggs will drop down in the marbles and hatch in about 2 days. Very tiny clear little guys. They will live on the yolk sack for another several days before you start feeding. They need small first foods, I usually use Cyclopeze. They grow pretty slow and start to get some color beyound 1/2" in length. I agree with JoJo, they can be a pain to raise and I don't mess with them much. I have been getting fry in one of my breeder tanks with no spawning setup, surprised a few survive somehow.

I do have a wild caught group of 9 for sale for $200 if anyone is interested.

...

I came to a point where I took the Strawberry pots out, reduced the marbles to an inch or so and let my Cyphos Mikula eat the eggs.

It is cool to hear the marbles rattle and usually it signals that they've spawned and the fronts are enjoying their caviar

i think ima give it a try, since they are so hard and expensive to come by in this area. thats why i pretty much brought every bag of them at the usafishbox auction.

i have about 4 of 6 from my bigger cats nice and plump. and i've been out all day and didn't pick up a jar and some marbles.

between 2"-3"

mine are 4 to 5 inches...

nice, and you haven't had any activity with them?

nope i think they may be all gay,,, LOL

lol, i think you have the parents to my larger ones, they were brought as f1.

CajunGator wrote:

i think they may be all gay,,, LOL

I think all of my Petrotilapia are gay