Julidochromis
Ornatus / Mbete
Thank you Cichlid Press and
Ad Konings for allowing me to use your pictures.
This is a fairly peaceful little Julie. There are a lot of different
color phases to this species of Julidochromis. I like the yellow
base color with the black stripes. This is a great community fish
as it seems to get along great with most other fish. I is very capable
of protecting itself but rarely starts fights.
Tank size: breeding pair in a 20 long and 2 others in my 80 long community.
Tank Temp: 78 to 82
Tank pH: 8.0
Fish size when adults - Male 4" (10 cm) & Females 6" (15 cm) note
females are larger.
Breeding Information:
From what I have noticed about Julidochromis fry is, after they
hatch they seem to stay hidden for a couple of days before coming out of
the cave. One of the nice things about Julie's is after they spawn
the fry can stay in there territory even after they spawn again.
The older fry will help protect the newly hatched ones. However after
3 batches of fry the parent fish will start to force out the oldest fry.
Sense mine are in a breeding tank, that is kind of hard to do. If
I do not remove the older fry before batch number 4 hatches these fry will
eat the newly hatched fry. I make it a habits to remove all fry from
the breeding tank after the third batch is about 2 weeks old. It
makes it tough to catch the smallest ones but I don't want to mess with
the tank more than I really have to. In a community tank this Julie
will breed but doesn't seem to be all that tough and most fry are lost.
NEVER keep more than one species of Julie in a tank as they will cross
breed. Highbred fish in my opinion are feeder fish, I feel we must
keep the fish the same way God made it.
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