babies!

My kribs had babies! This has happened before, but every time it happens, it kind of is a thrill for me. (Life created in my room!)

For the past week or so, my kribs have been terrorizing the other fish in the tank. (Kribs are cichlids, so they are pugnacious by nature.) They also were becoming very reclusive and the female’s colors were becoming very deep and beautiful. She and the male have been hanging around a piece of driftwood a lot. Well, it turns out they had eggs, so they had an excuse to be nasty. Yesterday when I turned on the aquarium light, the parents were corralling a large brood of fry.

(That’s the male. My apologies, I’m not a very good underwater photographer — yet.)

This is the third time my kribs have had babies. Last time, several of the fry grew into beautiful adults that I was able to give away. I let the parents raise the babies. Part of what makes keeping cichlids neat and rewarding as a fish keeper is getting to see them exhibit their parental behavior. Most fish will just eat their own eggs or young, but cichlids are known as excellent parents.

These are three of my kribs. The fish on the lower left is my breeding female. The fish in the middle and to the right are also Pelvicachromis Pulcher (now you understand why fish keepers call them Kribs!), but they are actually adults from my first successful breeding.

Tags: aquarium, babies, fish, fry, kribs, tropical