Jade Bettas - Jack Dempsey

A young Jack Dempsey

The Jack Dempsey - Cichlasoma octofasciatum, is a Central American Cichlid (pronounced Sick-Lids) in the wild they are found in Honduras, reports have also been made of wild populations in USA, at this time I do not know any information about that or which areas of USA specifically.

I keep mine at 26C.

Initially I fed them flake food in the morning and Hikari Cichlid Staple Medium size pellet in the early evening, lately they seem to have gone off the Hikari.A couple of times a week I also add a high protein granular feed of a smaller pellet size.In addition to this they really love Surimi and they rush from the tank floor to take it from your fingers without any training at all, they are very keen on it, only feed it once or twice a week and if not feeding by hand ensure any waste is removed or it will foul the tank.
If you do not have access to Surimi (it is very easy to get in supermarkets) they will also take shelled prawns or earthworms but you need to ensure the worms have not been in contact with chemicals so if you are unsure it is best to not use them, likewise remove any uneaten earthworms or prawns or they will foul the tank.
(26/11/06) I am now feeding my Jd's Hikari Gold, the largest size pellets, 1 per fish in the morning and 1 in the evening, with the occasional treat of Surimi.

Decor in the tank, some of it is as you see in the above photo consisting mainly of large heavy rocks and smaller rocks (not stacked) and I also have some rectangular rocks with a slate roof and some odd small pieces of slate lying flat on the substrate around the tank as potential egg sites. Jack Dempseys are diggers they can move quite a bit of gravel overnight lol, so keep this in mind when choosing the decor, plants don't really last very long, although in the photo above you can see a Cryptocoryne wendtii, what I done was I put the lava rock in the community tank and waited until the offshoots of the Crypts had grown up through the holes in the rock with their roots underneath the rock, I then moved this rock into the tank where I would be having the Jacks and it rooted so they can't dig it up, they are not destructive fish they have ignored the crypt altogether, they dig as it is their nature to dig, not to be naughty and disrupt the tank decor. Likewise when they spawn they dig pits, more on my first attempts at breeding them later. Jack Dempseys are named after a man of the same name, you can read more about him here .
I recommend the Jack Dempsey as a good, interesting first Cichlid in their own species tank.

Breeding Behaviour

These were my first Cichlids, I bought 6 of them in Autumn (2005), as the young JD's gender cannot be determined and 6 is the number most likely to produce atleast 1 pair, they were just under 2" total length including their tails.
I housed them in a 48x15x18 tank with the hope of getting a pair from the 6.
In June 2006 I noticed one pair were driving the other 4 to a corner but not attacking them, they would chase them but keep about 12" distance behind them, the 4 would go to the corner, the pair would never then move in closer than the 12", they would just return to their spaces feeling they had defended their territory successfully.
If I clumsily approached the tank (rather than creeping up on it) the 4 would scatter into the cave of the largest male he would not drive them out but harbour them until I had moved away then they would just leave of their own accord so I knew they were not being bullied or under risk of injury.
On the 3rd of July 2006 I noticed the pair had laid eggs in a 68mm diameter pipe, the one fish remained inside the pipe with the eggs, the other fish was in a cave that had its opening directly opposite the pipe opening and he would come out at the first sign of danger and stand guard in front of the pipe opening.

Here are the Jack Dempsey eggs in the pipe

It was at this stage I decided to net and remove the 4 other Jack Dempseys and leave just the pair and eggs.It took me approximately 9-10 hours to catch the 4 as I did not wish to move the net anywhere near the substrate and disturb the pair.The male was driving the 4 to the top corner and they were hiding out around the top of the filter I would open the cover glass and catch one and the others would hide behind the filter or below it so I would come back later and catch another one, this continuing until I had removed the 4 to the other tank.

I tried not to disturb the pair too much, 3 days later all the eggs were gone, the pair had overnight dug a pit behind the lava rock and underneath the filter, no matter which angle I try I am unable to see into the pit at all, the female does not move from the pit and even waits for food to move towards the filter so she can grab it without moving more than 1". At night time I have tried to catch a glimpse of any fry but the male has taken to hovering between the rock and filter where I try to look through the glass into the pit, so they obviously know what I'm up to lol. I thought it best not to stress them by continuing to do this. So now its 15 days after the eggs were laid and I had seen no fry around so I decided to move the pipe and rock to see if there were any fry, there were no fry.I will wait for a future spawn and if fry result I will try and get pics.

Second Spawn (pair 1)

After the first spawn I placed the 4 JD's back in with the "pair" as I was unsure if they had truly bonded due to there lack of futher interest in each other, I done this on the advice of an experienced breeder. All was fine for some time no agression and all were getting along well.
On 17/08/06 I looked at the tank during the morning feeding and found 1 of the Jd's floating and quite chewed up, it appeared to be dead due to fighting, I removed him and noticed he was gasping and still alive I tried to treat him but it was too far gone and he died within a few hours :-(
At this time I removed the remaining 3 into their new tank and left just the pair, I also noticed the pair had spawned again, the same pair as the first time, I am sure of this due to their sizes.

Female with Eggs in pipe and upon rock

JD Parent Fanning the Eggs

Three days later the eggs were gone again, as it is usual for the parent to move them, as with the first spawn I did hold out some hope, but after spending much time looking around the tank I thought the eggs had been eaten.

JD female guarding her eggs by placing her body in front of them

A week later when feeding the pair I noticed some movement and on closer inspection noticed there was a small group of fry. The parents were biting an Hikari Gold pellet in half then chewing the one half and spitting it out on the gravel, the fry were eating this. I left the fry with the parents as I wished to wait until they were free swimming searching for food themselves before seperating them, both to allow for parenting skills to be practised/developed and to give the fry a better start, tending towards the natural behaviour, which I wished to observe and report upon here, I also hoped to make some photos of these activities for your viewing. I could not find the fry after a couple of days, I was unsure if the parents had eaten them or they had hidden them from view, I had read that the parents do not eat the fry but sometimes do eat the eggs, the exception being if they have new eggs/fry they will view the previous offspring as a threat to these and so they would eat them. It appears that this information is incorrect in this instance as the parents had eaten the fry and not spawned again at that time. Although as usual I still hold hope that I may find a stray survivor hiding out somewhere in the tank.

Third Spawn (pair 1)

03/09/06 during the morning feeding I noticed the most recent excavation below the slate cave had rather increased, upon inspection I noticed all the way through the cave, on the side, are eggs, laid upon a vertical surface rather than a horizontal one. This location of natural rock was 1 of 3 intended spawning locations added when setting up the tank initially, when the pair began forming I added the pipes to give more hides for the 6 jd's, I should have expected, best laid plans and all, the pipes were used for spawning. The eggs that are white fungus and these are the unfertilised eggs, I haven't counted an exact number of unfertilised eggs on this spawn yet, it appears at a quick glance, ( I didn't wish to disturb the parents too much this time), there are around 7-10 unfertilised eggs. It has shown me there is 17 days between each spawn when the pair are left without tank mates, the preparation for spawing appears to take approximately 5 days.If this information alters over future spawns I will update the time scale in this paragraph to reflect the measured range. Therefore, should any fry result from this spawn I intend to seperate them from the parents at 12 days, including egg incubation time, on the 15/09/06. I must say that this appears to be a short duration and am as yet unsure if this is related to them eating the fry of spawn #2.
14/09/06 - Lots of fry resulted from the spawning, it appears the numbers are increasing with each spawn considerably. Unfortunately it appears the parents have eaten them again.As usual I still hold some hope of a stray survivor. I will update when they spawn again.

Second Pair (spawn 1)

04/09/06 During the morning feeding I noticed a second pair has formed and had their first spawn, I have removed the third fish from that tank. Tank size and set up is slightly different for this pair, the tank size is 48x15x15 inches.Filtration in this tank is an undergravel filter powered by a fish house pump, its a big pump with a manifold it runs 12 lines to various other tanks.The filter outlet is fitted with carbon insert.Base gravel layers are 1.5inches of medium river gravel on top of the filter, then a gravel tidy with 1 inch of gravel on top of it, therefore there is no risk of eggs or fry going through the mesh of the gravel tidy as it has a solid layer of gravel beneath it. A gravel tidy, this is a fine soft mesh used to prevent fish that dig exposing the base of a tank or an undergravel filter thereby reducing its efficiency, it can also be used in tanks with plants so as to reduce the occurance of the root system growing through the slats in the filter and reducing its efficiency.The filter for the first pair is an internal power filter "Fluval 4 Plus".It is interesting in that the water flow rate from the filter outlet in this pairs tank is slower than that in the first pairs tank. This pair ignored the rocks and pipes and dug a pit out in the open area in the centre of the tank, they dug down to the gravel tidy and laid the eggs upon this.The pair then watch the eggs from inside a pipe or near the rocks that surround the pit, at times each of the parents go into the pit and hover over the eggs and inspect them.So here we have two very different types of spawning behaviour with one pair being cave/pipe spawners and the other being open substrate spawners, it will be interesting to see if the pair that open spawns continue to spawn in this manner during their future spawns.

Spawning Update

2 fry hatched from the second pairs spawn, these were observed in the tank and parental care for a few days after which the fry disappeared, presumed eaten by the parents.
26/11/06 - to date pair one have had 6 spawns hatch and pair 2 have had 4 spawns hatch, all fry from both pairs continue to disappear after a couple of days presumed eaten by the parents. I will attempt to artificially raise the fry and I will write updates on the methods I am trying, the results, both failures and successes.
05/07/07 - the second pair spawned again, the spawn was left with the parents and hatched fine, it was observed the parents chewing up Hikari pellets and spitting the chewed food out for the fry to eat.
After 2 weeks of this the parent returned to their hides but maintianed their breeding colours.
At this time I removed the fry to a seperate rearing tank.

Artificial Rearing Project

The Artificial Rearing Project was begun on the 14th January 07. I had previously never raised any Cichlid species for longer than 12 days after hatching. The subject species for this project is the Jack Dempsey Cichlid. These are the first Cichlid I have attempted organised breeding of.
At an early stage it became apparent that the parents of both spawns were eating the eggs and in later spawns the fry, a pattern emerged over 10 plus spawns and in 2 breeding pairs, this being that the fry were eaten when first leaving the wiggler stage and begining their life as a free swimming fry of approximately 3mm in length.
I decided to remove the fry at the wiggler stage and attempt to artificially rear them.

Set-up

The tank used was 6.6 imperial gallons set up with a sponge filter, heater. No substrate was used in the tank.PH of 7.

The Begining

On the 14/01/07 I observed that the latest batch of JD fry had hatched out and were at the wiggler stage. I syphoned them out of the parents tank, much to the parents anger, into a bucket taking approximately 5 gallons of water from the parents tank along with the majority of the fry.
Less than 10 fry remained with the parents as I wished to observe if my removing the majority of the fry would force them into accepting the remaining fry and raising them in a natural manner,accept their parental duty.
The tank the fry were to be moved into had all but 1 gallon of its water syphoned out, the fry and the water from the parents tank were then added to this and the tank was then topped up with the initial water that had been removed from it, this was to prevent too much difference occuring in water parameters and shocking the fry.

Following Day

My experiment of leaving the less than 10 fry with their parents to assess forced bonding or parental care failed as the remaining less than 10 fry had all been eaten.
The moving of the majority of the fry to the tank for artificial rearing had been successful in that zero fry died during the transition period of the folllowing days.

Initial Feeding Techniques

For the first few days the fry were not fed until they had used all of their yolk sacks up and had begun free swimming of sorts, a stop/start motion not fully swimming, more a darting motion.
First feedings were with Liquifry#3 which is a very fine powder food used for the fry of egglaying fish, this was mixed with tank water and drawn up into a 10ml syringe, the needle used is called an innoculation needle it has no sharp point at its tip, as it cannot be used for injections, it is for innoculating a culture jar, it is about 3 times the length of a regular needle used for injections, which helps in the fry feeding as it is safe and cannot injure the fry or yourself .
This food mixture was then very slowly dispersed into the water near to where the fry were.
The fry were fed with this mixture 4 times a day.(sometimes 3 of these feedings took place evening and late night/middle of the night).
As the fry became more active and their need for food increased the innoculation needle was discontinued and replaced with silicon airline which was pushed onto the syringe instead, this fits very tightly onto a 10ml syringe and you can use it from the begining if you do not have an innoculation needle, I have done it with airline with betta fry many times from the begining.
Manufactured food was used rather than live foods as I needed to ensure no cross-contamination occured and ensure that the foods nutrition was consistantly regulated/reliable and exactly the same in each feeding/day/week, otherwise it would not produce a reliable method of rasing the fry artificially as the potential for human error enters into things.

Tank Cleaning/Water Changes

Every day 10-15% of the tank water was syphoned out whilst cleaning the tank. This was syphoned using a small gravel syphon and bucket reserved for this fry tank. I then used an empty washed out crayfish container to empty the bucket whilst checking each time for any fry that had been syphoned out by accident so I could replace them back into the tank, this enabled me to keep a reliable count on any dead fry.
The number of dead fry to date is 6.

Progress

After 2 weeks (28/01/07) the fry food was altered to King British Flake food, this was finely crushed to a grit like consistency, you may see a photo of that in the feeding section, you can make a similar food with your favourite flake food.
On 12/02/07 the fry were moved to a larger tank which is 12 imperial gallons, filter is a double sponge filter and the tank has rounded natural river gravel as its substrate.

Pair 2 - Jack Dempsey fry at 7 days Old - taken 11/07/07

Pair 1 - Jack Dempsey fry at 51 days Old

21/04/07 - the JD fry are growing well, I moved them to a 30 imperial gallon tank a few weeks ago along with 2 juvenile bristlenose.
Filtration in this tank is an undergravel filter. Feeeding is now twice daily.

17/07/07 - both pairs spawns are growing well.
Pair 1's spawn of 14th January is now split across 2 of 30 gallon (imperial) tanks.
Filtration is sponge filters.

Pair 1 - Jack Dempsey fry grown on to 4 inches in size