Need help! Is this fish holding?

I'm still relatively new to cichlids and I'm not sure, but i think i have a female holding. I got a group of Cynotilapia Afra cobue from mark and they are still pretty small but this fish seems to have something in its mouth. If it is holding, what do I need to do?

Here is a pic of the dominant male

Yep, looks like she is holding!

In my best guess from the pictures I would say yes , you can always take it out and trying to strip it and see if anything comes out : )

Should I remove her and put her in another tank? I have a 20 gallon with 3 bristle nose I have available. Or do you just let nature take it's course?

I would say so...

Looks like she is holding. If you watch her long enough especially as they get bigger you can see the eggs/fry in the mouth.

It depends if you want to keep the fry or not. I let mine go in the tank. If you have enough hiding places the fry will be fine. You may only end up with a handful out of the batch that survive but for me that is a plus since I don't want to have to also find homes for dozens of fry from the now 4+ breeding pairs in my tank lol..
With the rock setup I have the fry can get into places no other fish can fit and they just stick to places like this till they are fast enough to get away from bigger things. I also don't feed the fry anything special, I feed the whole tank 1mm new life spectrum and the fry start picking at scraps right out of the mouth haha.

She appears to be holding . Yes , you could place her your extra tank . If you leave her where she is , most if not all , the babies will be eaten . If you place her in a separate tank . make sure the babies have plenty of hiding spots , cause mom is not adverse to a little fresh Sushimi !
I also see you have a Male Yellow Lab in with them .
Ray

My tank doesn't have a whole lot of hiding places since I'm still in the process of decorating, I wasn't expecting anyone to breed yet. They are in a 100 gallon with quite a few other fish.

when i see a female holding in my tank i put her in a 10g by her self until she spits. then leave her in the tank for about a week after to strengthen her back up before putting her back in the main tank

Congrats

Congrats on your female holding. I have a Mchenga holding at the moment, but I'm not 100% certain who the father is, as a Verginalis is often acting somewhat protective of her, so they will stay in the tank and let nature decide if they are to live.
Either way, they are not going to be leaving the house.
What happens in my tanks....stays in my tanks. No to spreading un-declared hybrids.

Your gonna have a bunch of fry,ever time u put her back with that male,i quit catching mine lol

Nice! You said they breed early, I didn't even notice that male color up like that till a few days ago.

Congratz Jason she's holding!Get ready to start having fry tanks all around the house!

Hey J the method to my madness since being thrown into the "fry" circuit is to catch the female as soon as I notice she is holding and put her in a breeder box until she spits. This accomplishes a few things 1. We had the pleasure of observing the process up close......waiting them spit and take the fry back in is awesome 2. We knew the exact # of fry we had 3. She was not picked on during that time nor were any fry eaten by the others and 4. Most importantly it helped us know what to look for when the females are holding.....so I can spot one a mile away...lol Hey I started out with only 1 breeder box and no extra tanks and now we're at 5 breeder boxes, 2-10g, 1-16g and 1-26g plus the 135g.......if you start having fry like we do you will "grow" some 10gals in no time.......have about 80 fry that came from 4 different females. I know to most out there that is a low number but to someone like me who wasn't totally prepared that's a heck of a lot of fish......lol. That's just my 2cents!

When you say breeder box, are you talking about the plastic boxes that hang on the inside of the tank? I have a net one that isn't too big

Oh and to answer your question.........yes I do agree with BFinley it looks like your female is holding. Now I conduct a simple test to make sure......when my husband goes to feed the group I zero in on that female to see if she eats, now some will rush to the food to throw the others off and make them think they are eating but watch closely and if she doesn't open her mouth for anything then that usually locks it in for me. Now I have been fooled because we use sinking pellets and many of our fish will take some and hold it in their mouths I guess to grind it up and it will look like they are holding. But if there's no food around and the fish looks like it is chewing Skoal then BINGO!!

Awww! How cool! Congrats! I know nothing about Cichlids, but I have to admit, it DOES look like she's got a big ol' chaw of Skoal in her mouth!

Jstump wrote:

When you say breeder box, are you talking about the plastic boxes that hang on the inside of the tank? I have a net one that isn't too big

Yeah the clear plastic ones......I've gotten them from Petco and they are about $7. They are large enough for all of our small to med-lg fish. They clean up good with a round bristle brush (baby bottle type) and are very sturdy. There is a grill type deal the fits near the bottom so the fry can go there and separate from the mom. I've never used the net type so I can't comment on that one.

awesome, thanks for the tips. Gotta love this site. The female that is holding is pretty small so i'll go pick up one of those today

Just looked on Ken's site and he sells two different brands for under $5........the Lee's brand (2 in 1) is the exact same ones I have........guess I'll be adding a few of those to my next Ken's order......lol.

Jstump wrote:

awesome, thanks for the tips. Gotta love this site. The female that is holding is pretty small so i'll go pick up one of those today

Glad to help!

Hey that female is pretty much the same size as our Rusty and Dem females who have been producing for the last nine months so I'm not sold on the size deal cus they were smaller than your pics in the beginning. Our Yellow Lab is the same size as your YL pic and she has had two batches already. I have found that the first batch of a new mom no matter the size can go either way........success or fail (one of our females ate the fry on the first try then another spit the eggs out)......so using the breeder box for me enables the observation I need to understand what's going on.

I let my females hold for 12-14 days then I "strip" them into a breeder net ( from petsmart) . They stay in that for a few days then into a grow out tank