Lake Tanganyika lemon cichlids (neolamprologus leleup)

Lake Tanganyika lemon cichlids


Good day everyone (or only for those that will be reading it)

This will be my second go at breeding Lake Tanganyika cichlids; the first was the Golden Julie. With them I had success and later sold the entire breeding setup.



This time I am going to look at the lemon cichlids, the reason for this is they have much more color and are fish that are more active than the Julie is. The breeding setup has been setup and the fish will be added today or tomorrow. So I have bought 4 from Pta, the rule stated you need 6 to start with, but will try my luck with 4 for now as they are a few bucks.

I have them for 2 months now, the one was moved to my community tank as he was bullied a lot (by what I think will be the bigger male as they are very territorial) he is doing good in the community tank as he a lot of space and freedom and no body bothering him. So I have three in the one tanks to still get a pair, so I have seen before if you are lucky one male can and will take two females if the tank is big enough (BTW extremely difficult to sex them at a young age) . So here is to hoping, I have one male and two females (looks like it but I may be wrong).

The setup I have put up is a 1.5 m with play sand (you can get it from almost everywhere but make sure that it is sterilized and that you clean it before hand and leave if for a week in the tank and get a good filter to filter out all the sand particles as seen in the photo (also check your pH once done ,the fish room still a bit dirty but getting there) the filter I used is not filtering tanks per say, but for filtering small swimming pools.


It work good and is waterproof so I submerge it completely in the tanks with its own filter in side and let it work. (The water in the tank and filters have also been running for 2 months.)

It changed the tank from this to clean in 4 hours (do not have a photo where it is clean but will update). The reason for the sand is they like to dig and they are cave dwellers and breeds in caves, so I am trying to replicate as far as I can and the sand is the finest I can get that I trust that is also cheap and easy to get. Now the next step will be to add many rocks to make caves and hiding spaces as the male can get aggressive.

The nice about breeding lemon cichlids is that they form a family and the fry that grows up will still be around when the new fry arrives and will only be kicked out after a few months by the parents so once again hiding spaces.

Therefore, this is where I am standing now and will introduce the fish this week and give it some time to see what will happen.

 

Good luck Bart

 

Very nice. Hope you have a breeding pair there. Following to see what happens. So happy that I can do my breeding in a 1.5ft and not a 1.5m tank

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

Awesome @Bart and thanks for sharing

Keeping fingers crossed that they pair off

Must say they are stunning, good luck!!

 

Such pretty fish, i have split mine because of non-stop fighting. Good luck

 

Looking forward to updates.

 

Very nice. I always liked Tanganyika ciclids.Good luck with the breeding.

 

Leleupi is a very nice fish and easy to care for and to breed. a 1.5m can house more species for breeding. I have leleupi and bricardi in a 3ft tank and they get along fine.

 

Hi im also looking for some to add to my colection of tangs

 

Good day all.
hope everyone is well. it ends up i have one pair and had to move the two to my main tank, so that they can breed in peace or just swim around .
here are some pics after the water was clean thanks to the filter.


once i was done i did some sand moving and then introduced the fish.

at this moment the male and female are around one cave and the male started to become more aggressive but the female hangs around him and he dug a nice gave for them. Every now and again they enter together, so i believe they are busy laying egg or just hanging out in the cave but the aggression toward the female tends to show me that the male may be looking after the eggs as they do when the have egg.
once again a awesome fish and and a strong personality.

will keep you posted.

and BTW my dwarf gouramis are growing up nicely and they are looking strong i have one huge one that i will keep for breeding purposes.

 

The “Dance” has started.

I removed the Female and conditioned her and the male with live and good foods. I introduced her back yesterday with a belly full of eggs. Today they were very busy in their cave and lots of rubbing and Dancing occurred, so I believe they will spawn in the next day or so or even today. Then the fun will begin.

Cheers for now.

 

That's fantastic @Bart!!

So far, so good... good luck from here on and keep the updates coming

 

@Bart update please

 

Good day sorry for the long wait.

They bred, and I had a few babies that I but in a differed tank because I had to change the tank they were in. so now I have a new better setup for them with more caves and the female has a nice gave now and they are still showing spawning behavior I am just waiting to see what they will do.

The babies I gave to a friend that are rising them now. The next batch I will keep in the tank with the parents. The only reason for separating them is that the male was to aggressive for them and that is also why I did the tank over with more hiding spots and some flow and it seems to be working much better that the previous one.

 

Nice @Bart

Post some pictures next time, we would love to see them
Also some pictures of your setup now.

Good luck with the next batch

 

Here is the setup that i am using at this moment, in the one pic you can see the female in here "cave" but they are doing nicely at this moment .

 

Very nice and they are really beautiful

Good luck with the next batch!!

 

Hi, I know this is a old post but you dont maybe have some for sale?

 

I have one you can have, near Mall of Africa