Cichlasoma octofasciatum-Jack Dempsey
Living up to its name!
by Rudy Pabelick
From "Splash," Milwaukee Aquarium Society
Aquarticles
I am fairly new to the hobby, starting my first tank about a year ago, 55 gallons. I
didn’t get interested in cichlids until I had first seen them a few months later.
Now, many new fish and many more tanks later, I am on my way to having a nice size setup
of aquariums. I now have three 55 gallons, one 29 gallons, five 20 gallons and six 10
gallons.
Now on to my story of the Jack Dempsey, I bought the Jack Dempsey as one of my first
cichlids. I was drawn to the idea of having such a brute in my tank. His first tank-mates
consisted of a yellow labidochromis, a O.B. peacock, 2 red tail sharks, 2
convicts and 2 spiny peacock eels along with some plecos. The Jack Dempsey was very timid
as he; I assumed it was a he, tended to stick to staying in his own cave. He never showed
any aggression towards any other fish at any time, even if they came by his home. I have
also seen the yellow lab. go into his home with him in it and he did nothing.
Then I became interested in breeding cichlids, which required me to try and find some
mates before I could do this. After I bought a mating pair of Geophagus brasiliensis
I had the pleasure of seeing a pair of cichlids spawn, which was very cool. I knew that
the brasiliensis is one of the easiest cichlids to get to spawn. Now I was
determined to get another one of my cichlids to spawn.
Since I only had one Jack Dempsey, a male I thought, I had to go out and find a
possible mate for him. I also had taken all of the other fish out of the tank and put in
some Aulonacara stuartgranti, this had been done months before. So, I went to a
local fish store and found a lonely Jack Dempsey in a tank along with some other kinds of
cichlids. This one looked like a female based on what my Jack Dempsey looked like at home,
she had shorter and more rounded dorsal and anal fins along with a lighter body color with
brighter blue/green coloration on her gill plates. My male had longer and more pointed
dorsal and anal fins with darker blue/green coloration. So, I thought I was partly on my
way to having a set of mates, provided that I found a female and assuming that they would
even pair up.
I brought her home and introduced her into the tank that he was in, and to my surprise
she went straight for his home. They stayed in there for about one minute, then they both
came out swimming side by side…YEAH! Right away, she started to make some peculiar
moves around him, like swimming with her body horizontally underneath him and then to his
side again. This went on for hours with short stops by his cave. They’re color had
intensified being a lighter color with brighter blue/green spots on there cheeks.
The next morning when I woke up, I found the substrate moved all over the tank where
they made holes, including the substrate around a piece of slate I had laying near their
cave. I found eggs sitting on top of this piece of slate, a lot of eggs! I was amazed that
this had happened the day after I had attempted to just find out if they would possibly
pair up without killing one another. Two days later the eggs were gone of the piece of
slate and I didn’t see any fry or eggs anywhere!! I did notice the female just
staying in one spot by the slate where the eggs once were. The male would come around
often to help the female chase off the peacocks that would come to close to the slate. So
I peered closer, trying to look behind the slate and through the plant and saw the fry,
with the yolk still attached, gathered there.
You would think this was the end of my story, well not quite yet. A few days after I
saw the fry behind the slate they were gone again. I saw the mother sitting in this hollow
tree stump I had next to the slate, and she wasn’t moving, not even for feeding time.
So, I got a flashlight and shined it in the dark tree stump there were the fry, all 500 or
so. The next day they were free swimming and starting to swim out side of the tree stump.
I figured let's get them out of there before the peacocks get a boost in protein. I got my
siphon hose and started sucking them into a bucket. This took quite some time, the more I
siphoned the darker mom and dad got, I mean jet black with white stripes. I finished
getting every one of them as mom and dad start chasing the peacocks all around the tank
looking who had their babies. I quickly grabbed my tank divider and separated the outraged
parents from the rest of the occupants. They kept swimming at the other fish on the other
side of the wall running into the divider. Soon they calmed down a bit.
I then put the fry into two breeding nets back into the tank they came from (I can hear
some of you now, read on). I placed them on the side of the peacocks, the calmer of
the two sides, and feed them baby brine shrimp right away. This went on for about a day or
until I woke up one morning to find one of the breeder nets was empty. That is right -
either I had about 250 Houdinis on my hands, or some Aulonacara were very full at
this time. To the other side the other 250 went, I thought they would be safer by mom and
dad than by my little seamstresses. The very next day, all 250 of the other fish were
lying very still - nope, they were dead. I have learned that breeding nets are not the
greatest at allowing water to circulate through the net along with the oxygen.
So, I have learned many valuable lessons from this, and I hope you did too. It would
probably be best to keep the Jack Dempseys in their own tank if you are hoping for them to
spawn. And if they do spawn, take the parents out of that tank when the fry are swimming.
This way, you don’t have to worry about any fry turning into Houdini or suffocating.
By the way, my Jack Dempsey are back to being a normal color and nice again…until
next time.
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