A few people that have checked out this site have asked me about the first babies this breeding pair had. The �Fry Log� that I have posted on this site is documenting their 3rd and 4th clutch of eggs. I wasn�t prepared for the 2nd clutch they had and the fry all died within 2 days of hatching. It may have been due to the fact that I wasn�t feeding the breeders much of a varied diet at that time. But the very first batch they had on July 29, 2005 was a success. I estimate that they had about 150 to 175 hatchlings but after the first week we were down to maybe 100. This all took place in a 10 gallon aquarium. The pair were half the size they are now (male 4.5�, female 3�) so even with the babies, the aquarium wasn�t all that crowded, at least at first. After about a week of watching all these fish growing rapidly, I got my hands on a 20 gallon aquarium. I transferred the adults into the 20 and left all the babies in the 10. This worked out very well for the babies but the parents soon hid away in their caves and for weeks I hardly ever saw them out swimming around. I eventually had to place the babies in a larger grow-out tank. I had a 40 gallon aquarium that I had built some 20 years earlier so I dusted it off, cleaned it out and filled it with water. Two days later, all the babies were happily swimming around in it. It�s not a pretty tank but it sure serves this purpose very well, for now at least. I began to power feed the young. What I mean by that is that I fed them often and fed them a lot. I was anxious to get them up to about 3 to 4 inches so that I could get the local pet stores to take them off my hands. I wasn�t asking for money or even a trade, I simply wanted to get them out of the house. I cannot just dump them down the toilet as so many people suggested I do. These 50 babies over the next couple of months grew like mushrooms but when it came time to offer them up to the local stores� NO INTEREST. One friend of mine who owns a retail pet store did offer to take 6 of my largest but to date I don�t think he�s sold one. I�ve given a few away to friends and family and I�m now down to 32. They are getting huge and I had to add another 20 gallon tank to thin them out. I�m also using the original 10 gallons aquarium as a central filter for the 40 gallon and the 20 gallon. The diagram on this page shows how this is all laid out. Nothing fancy at all. It�s all housed in a basement room that was built to be a photography darkroom. So what if there�s no windows and the walls are painted black. It has a full double sink with hot and cold running water and that makes cleaning filter a breeze. It�s a good thing too because I�m cleaning filters every other day or so and changing water daily. In this 70 gallon system I usually change 12 to 15 gallons daily and when I clean all the filters at the same time, I�m changing about 20 gallons. In the process of changing water, I siphon the floor of the aquariums, including the 10 gallon filter. There is lots of residue that accumulates there and with no gravel in any of these tanks, it's easy to simply siphon off the bottoms. These fish are very healthy and I enjoy watching how they all get along so well as they bump and smash into each other at feeding time. When I dump a bunch of Cichlid sticks in all at once, the water is churned up and splashed all over me and the floor. As you Cichlid owners know, most of these guys are very messy eaters, so I turn the central filter off for about 20 minutes when feeding them. This is on a timer so that I can leave the room and know that the pumps will turn back on 30 minutes later. This give the fish time to consume the food particles that drop to the bottom of the tank. They will clean most of this up if they can get at it. Before I set up the timer for the pumps, my filters would clog up after a few days with uneaten food. It�s under control now. So check out the diagram and see how simple it is to connect these aquariums in series to provide some excellent filtering. A couple of large siphons, 3 small pumps and 3 $1.00 food storage containers is all it takes, along with about 15 feet of 3/4" OD plastic tubing. The filter works great and the fish look great in this world of juvenile Jack Dempsey�s. ... JackArthur46 |
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| 70 GALLON GROWOUT SYSTEM |
| NOT SO TECHNICAL INFORMATION |
| They grew rapidly because I was, as usual, feeding the tank 5 to 8 times a day. The adults ground up all the food so that the babies could eat and that kept me cleaning the gravel quite a bit. What a trick it was to vacuum the gravel and not suck up babies. I did catch many but I scooped them out and put them back.. On August 25, I moved into another residence out of state. I had to pack the adults and babies into a 15 gallon plastic drum with a tight fitting lid. The move took all day and by the time I had the 10 gallon aquarium set up again it was late that day. They had been in the drum for about 8 hours and I lost many babies. I think the parents panicked and killed them. Once they were settled in, everything was fine. I had about 50 babies now but the parents seemed very comfortable taking care of them as before. |
| This website has been established for the purpose of sharing my experiences with Jack Dempseys with those of you who may be interested. Jack Lamountain [email protected] |
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| This growout diagram is of my initial system for the first batch of fry that I reared to adults. As you may have seen, I now have modified this fishroom with 8 or 9 aquariums on central filtration systems. (see 'Fish Room' ) The homemade filters sketched below are, however, very effective and I still use one or two from time to time on very heavy bio-loads. |
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