Artan's Blog: Fish Mating Season

I am wondering what kind of day is today... Can I say a happy day or not? Today I just saw two couples of my fishes mated. One couple was mating in the afternoon while I was coding. I heard bunch of noise coming from my fish tank. A male fish was chasing around another fishes and frequently they hit the shells or small rocks on the bottom and sometimes they splashed the water on the surface. I wondered what they were doing until I saw a male fish started to dance and a blue female cichlid started to approach. I didn't pay too much attention when they were mating and not so long after I saw the blue female fish has already held eggs in her mouth. I was actually shock, because this blue female just gave birth to twelve babies last month and now she is "pregnant" again!

Another couple of my fishes mated in the evening, they are a couple of red-eye yellow cichlid. For your leisure time entertainment may be you can watch this video below that I recorded during the mating process. After watching hopefully you can get a little bit knowledge of how this kind of fish breeds, who knows one day you might want to breed this kind of fish too. ^^

The video shows how African Cichlids do the mating ritual. Firstly, the male starts to shake the body or dance around the female and then the female will pursue the male's genital or secretion area near anal fin, then they rotate around the male pursues the female's genital. At this time, the female will lay eggs, then she instantly turn around to pick her eggs up, then the male dance again and the female pursues the male's genital to get sperm to fertilize the eggs in the mouth. Then they change position their position again repetitively until the female have no more eggs to lay. This mating ritual ends in approximately 10 minutes. This video is only a part of the whole mating ritual.

I put this couple of African Cichlids in a water bucket separated from other fishes in the tank to let them mate. The reason why they should be separated, because when they are trying to mate, the female does not dare to lay the eggs since the other fishes are approaching to steal the eggs when she lays it. And actually my fish tank is not really big, kinda crowded,
so I separated them temporarily and put them back to the tank again after mating.

How to see your fish is ready mate is pretty easy! To see which one is male, just pay attention to the fish that is chasing around the other fish and it has white or yellow spots near the anal fin (the female doesn't has the spots), the other thing that is quite obvious is that he will shakes the body like dancing. And how to see the female that is ready to mate is that the anus is swelling and she is trying to approach the dancing male.

So when you see this kind of situation, then separate them to the other place to let them mate peacefully without the interference of the other fishes. And after mating you can put them back to their fish tank again. The mother fish will keep the eggs safe in her mouth!