Paratilapia bleekeri from Madagascar

My history with P. bleekeri dates back to my days in Denver in 1999. The zoo was dismantling some of their madagascar exhibits and they gave the aquarium store I worked at 8 young specimens of P. bleekeri. I was succesful at breeding them within 6 months even though they were far from their full adult size but I had to give them up when I moved away. Many of you may know me as a total coral head but I have always maintained a soft for this particular freshwater fish and in march 2003 I finally found some young for sale.

Within the group of 6 I obtained, 2 of them quickly paired off. This pair dominated and really outapced the others in growth and aggression. An odd thing happened during this early developmental stage. As expected, the largest specimen displayed male characteristics and behavior and the second largest developed female characteristics and behavior. The sub-dominant female eventually outgrew the large male and over the period of several days, they both switched in hierarchy. The male became the female and vice versa; this change was particularly evident in their marked behavioral changes. They would eventually spawn a few month later but two broods never lasted to hatching. A Botia sp. tankmate may have been responsible for the spawn's demises.

Skip ahead 2 years to July of 2005 and I am about to get rid of my whole freshwater tank. The fish hadn't had any more spawning events and i was ready to call my breeding effort a failure. I hadn't done a water change on the tank in about 3 months, there's a ton of slime algae and the male is about 7 inches and he keeps the female in hiding all the time but he's already killed off the other tankmates. The tank evaporated to almost half full/empty and the power filter is raining slowly down on the surface. A brief power interruption caused the filter to lose suction and so it wouldn't start up again. I was headed out the door so I unplugged it and told myself that I'd fix it the next day. About 5 days went by where I didnt restart the filter but I kept checking in on my fish to make sure they were ok and they seemed better than ever.

The pair was getting along and there seemed to be an unusually high number of pits in the sand. The day I actually went to restart the filter I noticed a silevry swarm of about 2-300 fry hovering below their parents. I guess I wasn't as surprised as I shoulda been but in the end, I didnt care; i was just glad to see the pair getting along with nuptial coloration and a generation of rapidly growing offspring. As of 8/7/5 the young are approximately 3/8" and I hope to start distributing them in late september. I hope you enjoy the images, they are kind of grainy but I had to use a fast shutter speed to capture the rapidly moving parents and young.

A beautiful specimen with great identifying detail for the genus.