These babies are 8 days old and swimming briskly about the aquarium. They can be seen burrowing into the gravel looking for food and microworms. |
| --- NEW --- |
 |
| .. |
| A NEW BATCH OF JACK DEMPSEY EGGS APPEARED AND THE FRY HAVE HATCHED ON 9/3/04 |
 |
|
|
|
| . |
| Sept 30, 2006
The babies Dempseys are 4 weeks old now. The young are smaller than they should be but those that have survived look quite healthy. The adults have stopped acting aggressive towards me now when I approach the tank. They simply stare me down. The population seems to have stabilized at around 75 or 80 babies. Theirs at least 65 and maybe 90� very difficult to count. I�m putting some extra food in now that the juveniles are larger and eating more. If the tank gets cloudy again, so be it. These are one of the hardiest fish you can raise so I�m not too worried about clear water. The parents are eating well and so are the babies. The male can eat 4 or 5 Cichlid sticks at a time but much of it is blown out his gills and scattered throughout the aquarium to feed the young. Sept 26, 2006 This past week has been uneventful in the world of Jack Dempseys. The babies have grown in size and shrunk in population. Most deaths are due to starvation� the larger and more aggressive babies getting most of the food that�s available. I would guesstimate that about 80 have survived but expect more losses. In a tank that is already slightly cloudy, I�m not going to add more food. The parents are much less aggressive with me now when I approach the tank. They simply swim about the aquarium with their young and seldom try to herd them anymore. The male continue to stir up the gravel every night, making a large hollow out in the gravel. I�m not sure if he expects the young to sleep there or if it�s simply to stir up food for the young. Sept 19, 2006 The water has cleared a great deal since the 17th as the population of young has stabilized.They seem to enjoy picking at the gelatin food and their bellies look rounded. I�ve fed only the gel food for two days. The adults are more excitable now than ever. Just seeing me moving towards the aquarium brings on a flurry of activity from both of them. The female is back to her old habit of nudging the male in the head with her opened mouth each and every time he gets TOO excited. I�ve never seen the male turn on her aggressively when she does this. He just stops his aggressive movements and moves away each time. If she could talk she would probably be saying �Oh Jack, calm down or you�ll have a heart attack!� Sept 17, 2006 After two days, the water is starting to clear. I imagine the cloudiness was due to large numbers of the fry. The population is down to about 1/3 the original numbers. The surviving fry are getting larger and I can see they are eating larger bits of food now. I�ve started feeding them my homemade gelatin food and they are picking at it as the parents chop it up into more bite size bits. Feeding this gel food too early is dangerous for the young. I�ve read that they get bound up with the gelatin and perish. Being two weeks old now, I feel it�s safe to feed, as I have before. Sept 15, 2006 The water is getting quite cloudy today and the population of frye is again noticeably reduced.Upon close examination with magnifying glass, most of the swimming fry have rounded bellies. A few are thin and although they swim about energetically, I imagine those will be the next to perish. The parents seem more aggressive than ever with this dwindling population of youngsters As the picture to the right shows, the large adult male is in my face each and every time I get near the aquarium. His mouth is wide open and his tiny teeth can clearly be seen as he attempts to bite off my head. The water Temp has remained in the range of 76.6 to 77.4 F. Sept. 14, 2006 The water is a bit more hazy today and I believe another 10% have been lost in the last 24 hours. The surviving frye look very good. They are obviously the more aggressive of the hatch and are getting more food. �The survival of the fittest� as nature demands. I often see fry at the bottom of the tank wriggling down between the large grains of gravel.They are obviously looking for bits of food at this stage but some do get trapped and perish. The lack of water circulation down there deprives those trapped from getting oxygen and they die. Relatively few die in this way but let it be known that a sandy bottom would not pose this problem. Sep. 13, 2006 The numbers have dramatically reduced over night and throughout the day. I see many dead or dying fry floating about the tank water. I have a bit of a cloudy water condition developing due to these loses but I�ll refrain from doing anything about it at this stage. The water is well aerated and the surface is being agitated by one of the return hoses from a pump. If I were to guess at a number I�d say I have between 225 and 275 babies left alive. It�s impossible to get a count. Many fry swim to the surface and find small bits of food and other organic matter to feed on while others squirm about the large grains of gravel to find particles that are wedged between them. I�m constantly temped to offer some sort of fry food to help them survive but I can�t deal with the numbers in a large hatch such as this. I estimated about 500 fry from this hatch. |
| --- NEW --- |
| Sep. 12, 2006 The population of fry has dwindled at least by 1/3 and yet those that remain look strong and healthy. Most forage for food within the grains of gravel while others swim about the aquarium. It�s the swimmers that suffer the greater losses due to hunger, I imagine. The parents have long stopped trying to keep them grouped now but instead simply swim amongst them waiting for some outside predator to come after them. If I approach the tank, the adults swim up to me and if I put my hand on the glass, they will attack the glass. Their colors remain very dark Sep. 11, 2006 The fry are swimming much better today with more control over direction and speed than yesterday. They are also getting larger. I�ve also noticed some reduction of numbers. The tiny fry have used up their reserves and are now looking for food. As I have always done when leaving the fry with the adults, I don�t feed special fry food. I do offer the adults more regular food so that they can chomp it up and offer small pieces to the babies. This process will eliminate large numbers and leave only the very strong and aggressive to survive. Sep. 10, 2006 Today the tiny frye began swimming. All are swimming around, some close to the floor and yet others near the top. The parents are both capturing stragglers in their mouth and returning them to the area of the aquarium where the majority are swimming. This is keeping the adults very busy. The fry will be looking for food very soon as their yoke sacks are consumed. But for now, they are just curious little swimmers. Most are trying to bury themselves in the gravel along the glass. I�ve notice this before in other hatches. I don�t know if this is to escape the current from the pumps or just a natural impulse to protect themselves from natural predators in the wild. Sep 9, 2006 Nothing to report today for nothing has changed. The group (puddle) is still located in the exact same spot but they wrigglers are growing. I did, however notice that the water has a bit of a haze to it and not crystal clear as usual. I doubt it�s the feeding for I�m very careful about that and the adults are gobbling up everything I put in the tank. If anything, I�m leaving them a bit more hungry than usual. If it persists, I�ll change 3 or 4 gallons tomorrow. Sep 8, 2006 Much to my surprise, the wrigglers have not moved from the spot they were put in on the 6th. I suppose it�s due to the parents feeling quite secure in their selection and, of course, there are no predators in the aquarium. The adults are darker now, almost black. Very little blue is being displayed by the male and none at all on the female. I�ve read that amongst fish, black is an ominous color and the parents wish to look as threatening to potential predators as possible at this stage. They are working well together to keep any stray young from wandering too far from the �puddle�. There is a lot of water current in this tank and the young fry will have a tough time swimming once they get beyond the wriggler stage. I don�t know if this will interfere with them feeding and just surviving. I�ve never had this much water current in a fry tank but I�m not about to shut down a pump for I need the filtration turn over rate. SEP 7, 2006 The wrigglers remain in the same location today. The parents seem to be comfortable with this location. The picture to the right is the best view I can get of these little guys. As you can see, the majority are huddled in what I call a �puddle�. What you can�t see in a still picture is that this �puddle� of baby fry is pulsing and swaying yet they stay in a huddled mass all the time. You can see a few babies that have broken away from the group and appear swimming above the mass. They have very little control of motion and direction at this age but in another day or so, these little guys will be swimming in a tight bunch rather than huddle of the floor of the tank. SEP 6, 2006 By midday today, the pair had moved the young wrigglers out of the cave to a spot on the far end of the 29 gallon aquarium. This new location is directly under the return stream of water from the filter. The young seem to struggle to stay in a group but they somehow manage. Maybe the stream isn�t as strong in that spot. The parents are watching over the young very closely and every time I approach the tank, the pair together will approach the front glass to challenge me. This is very interesting to watch. I�ve always noticed that when the male becomes very aggressive with either me or his reflection in the mirror, it seems to excite the female. Even as they challenge me, side by side, as the male gets aggressive with me, the female switches her attention from me to him. She then opens her mouth wide and presses it against his side in a pushing manner. Then her body shudders up against him. He will either ignore this or turn away and swim off. This reaction by the female occurs each and every time the male becomes aggressive in her presence. SEP 5, 2006 Over night, the pair moved the fry from a shallow hollow in the gravel to deep in their cave. Fortunately, I can remove a cover over the exterior glass to expose the inner cave. Inside I see that they have grouped the young wrigglers on a small area that they removed all the gravel from and exposed the bottom glass. Here, the wrigglers are squirming in a tight groups. Only one parent at a time attends to them while the other is outside. The male is usually outside the cave and he continually digs out new shallows in the gravel. They will probably move the young to a new location within the next 24 hours. I�ve witnessed as many as 4 moves in one day but then I�ve also seen them leave the young in the same location for over 24 hours. I have no idea why they sometimes move them often and other times not. SEP 4, 2006 I was wrong about the age of the eggs. During the late evening hours the wrigglers began to appear. It was interesting to watch the female pluck each fry off the flat slate as it began it�s struggle to break clear itself. She very carefully would suck it into her mouth along with several others. She would then swim off to a predetermined hollow in the gravel to deposit them. Then she would turn around a repeat this process over and over again. During all this activity, the male would stand watch and guard the female against predators, (me). Every time I approached the glass too closely, the male would attack with mouth wide open. I was very surprised to see the hatch so soon. As I stated in yesterdays log entry, not one egg showed white fuzz on it. This denotes that the egg is bad and won�t hatch. After a few days I usually see about 10% of the eggs covered and maybe more. This female doesn�t clean her nest all that well of bad eggs usually. She either cleaned it exceptionally well this time or, the eggs were very healthy, the water very clean and the male fertilized every egg. No matter, the hatch was excellent. The parents are guarding them very closely as I might expect and when I get anywhere near the glass, they both dart out at me. It�s fun to watch. SEP, 3, 2006 As I expected, I returned home today to find that the pair of Jack Dempsey�s had their eggs would guess that they are less than 24 hours old because not a one has any white fungus on it. Even the best of spawns produce some bad eggs that turn fuzzy white after a day or two. The female is very attentive to the eggs, fanning them almost constantly. The male, on the other hand, is keeping his distance from them. He�s hovering at the opposite end of the tank near the mirror. I�ll remove the mirror in hopes that he then helps the female attend to the health of the eggs. When I got home, I fed them immediately. They were hungry but didn�t eat nearly as much as I thought they might. I�m going to keep them on the hungry side for a day or two so that the water remains very clear of any fungus or mold. The egg count is between 450 and 500 as near as I can estimate. I believe the hatch will hatch in about 36 hours. AUG 31, 2006 As of 2:00PM my Jacks still show no major interest in spawning. Both male and female dart around each other than go back into the cave for several minutes. The colors are more intense and the female is very black, indicating she�s ready to spawn. I�ll be away for several days and when I return late Sunday I�m hoping that I find eggs on that slate. They won�t be getting much to eat for almost 3 days so I�m anxious to see if they spawn under those conditions. I�ll be back late Sunday, Sept 3. AUG 30, 2006 No change in the Jacks today. They remain uninterested in spawning. In fact, they are both spending more time inside the cave than out. Their colors are still vivid and they physically look ready but no action at all today. The water is in good condition and pumps and everything seems to be working fine so what are they waiting for. I�ll be going away for a few days and maybe a little starvation will kick them into gear. I�m feeding them each a large garden worm before I leave and maybe that will encourage them. Hopefully when I get back on Saturday, they�ll have some eggs about ready to hatch. AUG 29, 2006 OK, I�m getting impatient now. What are these guys waiting for. They seemed to have backed off the whole courting thing and are just meandering about the aquarium. They were so close as of yesterday. I need to do a major water change to snap them out of this. Maybe a 25% change will do it. The diet has been good and it�s been about 7 weeks since they last spawned. Usually after 6 or 7 weeks they are very ready to go again. We�ll see what tomorrow brings. AUG 28, 2006 The Jack Dempsey�s are together almost constantly now. The male shimmies and then the female responds. Then it�s back to the mirror for another mock attack towards his reflection. I changed 4.5 gallons of water (29 gal. tank) and the couple seem to be hovering more towards the top of the tank. Strange, but I�ve never seen them respond to a water change in this way and I change water twice a week. You may feel that two water changes is overkill and it is but I feed these guys very heavy feedings and I don�t wish to have a build up of Nitrate. Besides, they are always more active right after a 4 or 5 gallon water change. Water changes also encourage the pair to spawn and they usually do the night of a water change. I don�t think tonight is the night. AUG 27, 2006 Both the male and female are cleaning the piece of slate rock where she�ll lay her eggs soon. The male is going at the cleaning task with a bit more vigor. He�s still more interested in his reflection in the mirror at the end of the tank. This means that I won�t see eggs for another few days despite the female showing a very strong inclination towards spawning. I fed a large portion of beef heart this morning and then two more feeding throughout the day of cichlid sticks and my homemade frozen food. There is a lot of spirulina mixed in to my homemade brew, giving them all the greens they need. AUGUST 26, 2006 I fed the pair 4 garden worms this morning and they went crazy for this treat. I find that worms and ants stimulate this pair to a point of frenzied courtship that is amazing to witness. The male spins around and darts at her backwards sometimes, (tail first) and this seem to get her into a very frenzied state. On and on this will continue until they take a break and both aggressively go about cleaning the piece of slate. Then it�s back to the spawning dance once more. The colors on these fish, especially the male, are glowing iridescent blue. The red line across his top fin is very bright and seemingly wider, a beautiful contrast with the iridescent blues in that fin. The female is less striking but her face is freckled and lines with very bright blues. Her chin and lower part of her gill plate are iridescent blue. After feeding those worms earlier, I gave them a small feeding of Krill. Once again they devour this treat and get right back to their dancing. The aquarium that they are housed is a 29 gal tank with a 3 gal homemade outside filter. (click to view diagram) Two small pumps circulate approx 250 GPH through the filter. This filter is a breeze to clean and maintain and it also houses the 200 watt heater and a large airstone for plenty of aeration. The aquarium is set up in my office close to my desk where I spend many hours every day. It�s great to be able to look up from my desk anytime I wish and wonder at this, �world of Jack Dempseys� August 25, 2006 The male is cleaning off the slate surface a little more often now. This indicates that he is getting in the mood to spawn and will soon take on most of the cleaning duties� at least that�s how this male responds to the call of nature. The female continues to stick by his side and gives him a nudge every 20 to 30 seconds. When the male is not yet interested in spawning, he doesn�t tolerate much of this nudging at all. He�ll even attack her aggressively sometimes resulting in torn scales� sometimes on both of them. But now he is accepting all this nudging by her and he sometimes begins to wriggle and shimmy in front of her. This, of course, she loves and often they will dance around each other like this for up to one minute before taking a break. I believe we�re still about 2 to 4 days away from a spawn. My nights are very cool now and the tank temperature drops to about 76 by morning. If I were to push the heater up and maintain about 80.F I�m sure the spawn would happen sooner. Jack Dempseys like the temperature to be 80+ when spawning yet I�ve had spawns at temps around 75 several times. I feed extra feedings of both frozen shrimp and frozen beef heart today. Their colors indicate the increased protein and quickened desire to spawn. Good nourishment and water changes will keep these cichlids spawning about every six or seven weeks, providing I remove the previous young fry from the aquarium. Otherwise I find this male reluctant to spawn with his kids swimming all about the place. Thu-Aug 24, 2006 Not much change in the actions of the pair today. The female continues to clean off the piece of slate while the male doesn�t seem all that interested yet. Once the male gets involved in cleaning a spot for the eggs it�s only a day or two at the most before the spawn. His colors are vivid as are the female. Her sides are as black as black can be while her face if so very colorful with various shades of iridescent blue. At this point, I try to feed them foods with higher protein content. It definitely brings them to their peak much faster than if I continue feeding the normal diet. Speaking of diet� every day they get two feedings. One is of high quality cichlid sticks and the other would be a variety of beef heart, frozen brine shrimp and/or my home frozen gel food which has everything but the kitchen sink in it. All the cichlids seem to enjoy this homemade concoction and they grow very fast on it. Ask for the recipe if you�re interested. I�m sure it is a good diet for most all Central and South American Cichlids. I have a large Angel fish that enjoys picking at it also. AUG 23, 2006 The female seems to be cleaning that same piece of slate over and over while the male just watches and ignores it. In the past, I�ve watched the male become very interested in cleaning the area for the eggs and his enthusiasm was fun to watch. As I�m typing, I�m also watching this pair in their home and their colors are splendid. The spawning dance is occurring more often now and this means the male is becoming more interested in her. He�ll follow her to the cave often now and he either sits outside the door, shuddering and twitching until she comes out or he�ll enter the cave. I can then hear the gravel being tossed around from all the motion. It�s a small cave and these are good size fish. My male is about 8 inches in length and very thick with a fat stomach from the beef heart that I feed him every other day or so. AUG 22� This morning I found the female cleaning off a flat piece of slate. She�ll probably lay her eggs there when ready. Once the male begins to clean to slate, then I�ll know that the eggs are coming very soon. So far, the male hasn�t cleaned the stone at all. The males coloration has deepened and his blue color has become very iridescent. They reside in a 29 gallon tank with a 3 gallon outside filter and two small pumps that turn over about 250 GPH. I keep the water temperature between 76 and 77 degrees using a 200 watt submersible heater. In addition to that, I�m changing about 3 gallons of water on an almost daily basis. This may be overkill but I want as many eggs as possible to survive and hatch. Some will be used as feeder fish for my Angel fish (soon to come) and others will be raised to sell to the pet stores. AUG 21 The Male continues his mirror aggression but occasionally he turns to the female and demonstrates some interest. This would be the typical Cichlid dance involving shuddering, shivering and wriggling all around each other. This is only an occasional occurrence presently but this activity should increase with each passing day. The female spends most of her time now outside the cave and swimming around and next to the male. He shows a little more interest in her but continues to spend most of his time challenging his own reflection in the mirror. AUG 20� 2006 The female Jack Dempsey has finally come out of her cave and is swimming at the side of the male most of the time. She does this several days to a week before spawning with him. Her color is now vivid with deep black on her sides and chin and gills lit up like Times Square. When he attacks his reflection in the mirror, she will open her mouth wide and press against his side� a very odd response to his aggression. It�s very interesting to watch them interact through this time because his tolerance of her is sometimes limited and he will become very aggressive with her. She will then rush back into her cave and he goes back to attacking his reflection in the mirror. I would say that 60% of his time is spent in that mirror and as for the rest of the time, he�s resting or looking at the mirror from across the tank. |
| . |
| THIS FISH LOG WAS ESTABLISHED TO DOCUMENT THE HABITS AND GROWTH PROGRESS OF THE SPAWNING AND HATCH OF JACK DEMPSEY CICHLIDS. IT WAS INITIALLY FOR MY OWN USE BUT IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR ALL TO READ. On Sept 4, 2006, a new hatch has entered the world of Jack Dempseys. I'll be documenting their progress in detail for those of you interested. Previous spawns are all gone to pet stores and a few friends. Approximately 300 Juvenile Jack Dempseys have been donated or sold to pet stores throughout my area of Boston, MA. |
| MOST RECENT LOG ENTRY |
| PROGRESS LOG |
 |
| Approximately 450 to 500 eggs 24 hours |
.TO VIEW A DIAGRAM OF THE FRY TANK AND FILTRATION, CLICK THIS TEXT TO VIEW PREVIOUS FRY LOGS FROM 10/26/05 TO 5/07/06 CLICK THIS TEXT |
 |
| Wrigglers and a few swimmers on the third day after hatching |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|