If
the aquarium hobby did not already have a convict cichlid, the arrival
on these shores of the huge and handsome, black-and-white-barred
Tilapia buttikoferi would probably have gained it that
name. But whereas the relatively diminutive Cichlasoma nigrofasciatum
was "convicted" only of assault and battery, its monstrous
cousin from African rivers is strictly big league. Mayhem (defined
as the felonious taking of bites from one's adversary) and murder
are more his style.
A boisterous, sturdy fish, even as a two-inch fry, the buttikoferi
make your oscars look like flabby wimps, next to their athletic
physiques. And it goes deeper than appearances, as the oscars are
really "laid back" fish, not usually looking for trouble,
not bothering anyone they can't swallow whole, and leading a relatively
graceful, sedentary, and contemplative life; while buttikoferi
is Type A all the way.
After much trial and error--and you do not escape cheaply from your
errors!--I managed to raise healthy buttikoferi in a fairly
crowded Malawian community 55. It's not that aggression does not
exist in such a tank, but there are so many different targets and
so many noncombatants (females, small males and juveniles, and fry
too big to be eaten) for confusion factors, that virtually all serious
injuries are prevented.
Up to a point in their development, at about 5 inches, the Tbs were
so outclassed and outnumbered by the rowdy Pseudotropheus zebras,
Melanochromis crabros, various P. tropheops and other
mbuna, that they needed all their energy just to get their share
of the food. Rarely top-feeding, generally taking only what comes
through mid-water zones, the buttikoferi did not get much
but pulverized leftovers from the feeding frenzy of all those opportunistic
mbuna above them. It kept them humble. It also kept the smaller
ones (probably the females) alive and well, because if their big
brothers hadn't been looking over their shoulders at all those bullies,
they would have been killing or just wearing to death their little
sisters and future mates. So with the help, and sometimes a sacrifice
or two, of a couple hundred dollars worth of other fish, you manage
to raise a bunch of Tb to the young adult, or, "I have this
sudden and overwhelming urge to kill something" stage. The
next and immediately critical step is to get them away from everyone
else before they are able to.
OK. So you get them away
from everybody else, and they start killing each other (I didn't
say this would be easy.) The obvious solution is to separate them
each from the others, if you have enough empty tanks (and I mean
EMPTY), but then how do you get hundreds of little Tbs? And what
good are five or six thugs, in stripes, all doing hard time in solitary?
If you can't breed them, and you can't display them, and they're
a little too small (right now) to fillet. . . .
Well, you could just select the biggest, best male, and grow him
into a super show fish or personal pet, and sell all the others.
Or, you can go a little crazy trying various set-ups to outmaneuver
these wonderful but near impossible creatures for their ultimate
benefit as well as your own. Maybe you can benefit from our experience
in such an effort. Probably the best way, the only one we didn't
try, would be to put them all together, but in a LARGE tank--something
about the size of your livingroom should be about right --with lots
of cover, although I can't say that I've ever seen one take advantage
of any cover, no matter how severely battered. We don't have any
LARGE tanks, so we put them in a 55 and watched them like ... well,
like ospreys. The moment we saw any sign of pair formation, or noticed
any particular fish being singled out for punishment, we divided,
removed, or took whatever step seemed appropriate.
We ended up with three "pairs" (i.e., one male, one female,
not necessarily ready to do anything about it) out of six fish.
This did not mean that these "pairs" could safely be left
together. One presumed male was murdered before he could be moved
to safety. One pair seemed sincerely interested and were getting
along well together, in spite of the very obvious size difference
which always leaves the female at a terrible disadvantage if hard
pressed. By this time, the male was about 7 inches, SL, and the
female something under 6 inches. We put them in a so-called "40
breeder," and wished them well.
After eating about five pounds of rams-horn escargot, they spawned
on the bare glass bottom, carefully avoiding every piece of slate
I'd put in for their use, and thus also foiling my plans for stealing
the spawn. It certainly wasn't a very impressive spawn, maybe a
hundred, but probably fewer, tiny amber eggs scattered in a higglety
pigglety nonpattern. They were placed right under the uplift siphon
tubes of the power filter. That was a bit alarming, but presumably
it represented the best available water currents to keep the eggs
aerated and clean.
Although the female seemed mildly interested in the spawn, she did
not seem to tend the eggs with any great intensity. There was none
of the ~~staring and caring" and constant circling and tending
seen with oscars and many of the substrate cichlids who favor floor
sites, nor the egg fanning and attack darting at enemies real or
imagined of the various dwarf cichlids, nor again any of the obsessive
mouthing, staring and picking of angels and the others who favor
vertical sites. "Dad" seemed to take no real interest.
In a few days, however, we had a bunch of extremely tiny "twitchers"(prewrigglers),
all loosely scattered along the sealant strip under the siphon tubes.
They seemed to number no more than about 50, but then I ve never
considered myself competent to estimate crowds at fire scenes, much
less spawns, and am highly suspicious of those who claim to. What
I did know was that I would have expected more, bigger, and better
from these big, tough fish.
At the wriggler stage, I noticed the first signs of strain between
the parents, but as this took the form of the female butting the
male-and none too hard--I figured there was nothing to worry about.
The next morning, the female was dead and ail the wrigglers were
gone. There was no way to know for sure what had happened, but subsequent
observations led me to suspect that the male had threatened the
young, the female had probably become a bit more belligerent, and
the male had turned murderous.
This male was immediately set up with the spare female, since she
was displaying the very blue "lips" that we'd noticed
as the first prespawning sign on the first pair. Both male and female
"turn on" in color, as is true of most spawning fish.
When you are black and grey-white to start with, all you can really
do is to intensify-and so they do! They virtually GLOW in jet black
and silver-white. This time when the pair spawned, we chased the
male to the far side of the 55 and blocked him off with a piece
of plastic grid. This spawn too was on the bare glass tank bottom
rather than on slate or rocks or flower pots, all of which were
rejected. This was to remain the case in future spawns as well.
This spawn was more like it,~~ being dense, numbering in, conservatively,
the hundreds, and the eggs themselves seemed larger. At two or three
days we had wrigglers and a few days later they were up and swimming-ZILLIONs
of them.
The female made no apparent effort to control or contain them, and
they were EVERYWHERE. The next morning I saw hundreds of them having
breakfast with their daddy--but as he was the only one eating, I
got him out of there fast. Then, in case mom wouldn t prove an ideal
parent either, I pulled out about 50 fry, give or take 20 or 30,
and sequestered them to protect my BAP points. I need not have feared,
however. Although her mode of parenting was nonchalant at best,
with no effort to herd the swarm or to pick up stragglers, the fry
generally tended to stay in her vicinity, and low.
Although the separated fry were fed even better than those with
the mother, and were given daily water changes to approximate the
conditions in the larger tank, those with the female grew at such
an astonishing rate, much greater than those segregated, that after
a week I reintroduced the others. That proved an error, and suspect
that most of them were lost. They could simply have rejoined the
group and blended right in, but they behaved as strangers rather
than members of the family. While the others browsed nonchalantly
along the bottom, the "new" ones seemed terror stricken,
darted to the surface, and generally stood out in the crowd. While
I did not see the female make any real forays against then;, she
was obviously curious or suspicious of their weird behavior, and
I believe that she ultimately did them in.
The astounding growth rate held for two or three weeks, with the
fry achieving better than one inch TL, adult proportions and stripes
before two weeks freeswimming. They leveled off at about an inch
and a half, and seemed to stop for awhile. The female had been removed
at about a week, when the dense mob of one-inch fry seemed to be
getting on her nerves.
The pair were put back together, but separated by the grid, to see
whether they would spawn with the permeable divider method, but
neither they nor any subsequent pair would spawn without actual
contact, although they spent much time touching and "talking"
through the grid. It has been observed with many different combinations
of same sex and different sex fish, that the Tbs always seem to
enjoy each others' company through the grid and spend a great deal
of time interacting, with no show of aggression regardless of sex.
When of opposite sex, they will "turn on" in color and
court, but never spawn. I have never heard of this system working
with Africans, although frequently utilized with the larger and
most aggressive neotropical cichlids, which would otherwise require
huge tanks. Neotropic typically use visual display and ritual, along
with some early-on mouth-wrestling during initial pair formation;
while virtually all Africans, from tiny river rapids dwellers such
as Nano- chromis, through the boisterous Malawian mouthbrooders
and the Tanganyikan cave dwellers and other substrate spawners,
use very vigorous touching and butting to stimulate the actual onset
of spawning. This, in our unnaturally confining aquarium environment
will frequently result in the typically smaller females being battered
to death, particularly if they are unable to flee the aggressive
male when they are not ripe and ready. Such fish will probably never
spawn unless permitted this direct contact--which may have to be
closely monitored for safety. T. buttikoferi is merely
an extreme case, given such close quarters.
While the fry were growing, and their parents were "bundling,"
the third pair were given the benefit of my mate's ingenuity in
the form of a grid with vertical slots cut in it. These slots, just
two, were made big enough--and smoothed to prevent injury--to permit
the female to pass through with impunity, but small enough to make
the male hesitate or even to stop cold, at first. For the first
few days in their divided 29, the female waltzed around freely,
while the male stopped in abrupt frustration on his own side. By
the time he found that he could make it through without harm, she
had developed a clever technique for guaranteeing her privacy: she
would go through a slot, away from the male, then quickly turn and
place her mouth at the slot opening to prevent his following her.
We were very much impressed with this demonstration of problem solving
and rapid adaptation to a new situation. Once she found that she
could keep him at bay if she chose, she seemed not to need that
protection, and spent most of her time in the physical presence
of the male. The problem, of course, was that once they spawned
we had to remove the male again, but to be safe, as the female could
not drive him out of the compartment that contained the eggs, and
of course would not leave them herself. Again, the entire pattern
followed by this last pair was the same as the previous, although
the growth rate of the fry was not as great. He did find out, from
necessity, that baby oscars and baby "buttercups" seem
to do well together. In the fry-to-jugenile stages they are much
alike in behavior, size, and appetite. There is no need to go into
detail on care and feeding of these fry. About the only way you
can go wrong is by not feeding them A LOT and by not doing frequent
huge water changes, preferably daily, Unless they are in a very
large tank. Since these animaIs should exercise their little mandibles
early in order to prepare them for snailcrushing diet as adults,
I figured that they could practice first on unhatched brine shrimp,
so fed them newly hatched brine with increasingly less control as
to the state of the hatch as the fry grew larger. They cleaned the
plate. It is obvious that they are not microfeeders as adults, however,
and they lost all interest in baby brine shrimp by the time they
reached about an inch and a quarter. At this young age they have
already become midwater and bottom feeders, coming to the top to
feed only when there is very great competition for the food. By
the time they are full grown, the ideal food is their natural favorite,
snails, which drop through the water and are gulped as they go by.
They represent one of the few available nonpolluting foods which
will drift toward the bottom. I also suggest taking a huge pinch
of large-flake food, holding it tightly underwater until it globs
together into a lump, and then letting them have it. This works
well for most other very large cichlids, such as "chocolates"
and oscars (which are two other snail eaters). Many of these fish
(although not buttikoferi) eat by striking prey, and what
they do to loose flakes shouldn't happen to your tank!
Although the fry eat prodigious amounts, one should be very careful
not to overfeed the adults, who eat far less than you would imagine,
given their size. They usually affect the "Morris" role,
rather than that of Garfield. I recommend keeping them in a bare
tank, since you are unlikely to be able to include any but the most
expendable scavengers with them. |
Up
5
Up
5
Up
5
|
