Tips for breeding Multi shell dwellers

[M...]

Hey fellow aquarists! I've just gotten my hands on four Mulits, which I believe to be 1 male and 3 females. Im currently keeping them in a ten gallon tank with LOTS of shells, and a rock cave which the male and another fish seem to favor... This being my first ciclid tank I need some tips and tricks to get these guys to breed. I plan on upgrading them to a twenty gallon long once they populate a little more. I bought a grindal worm culture in hopes to encourage breeding, but they all arrived dead.... I also forgot to put my brine shrimp eggs in the fridge, so the hatch rate has crashed. I plan on buying some more in the near future. Also what is the recommended diet for multis? I've Googled it but haven't found any answers. I currently feed crushed ciclid gold, and frozen bbs.

Thank you in advanced for the tips, and tricks. 

[Andy's Fish Den]

I have a pretty good sized colony of multies in a 40 breeder tank. I feed them a variety of crushed up flakes, the Xtreme nano pellets, frozen daphnia and live BBS. As long a you provide them with good water, food and shells I don't think that you will have any problem getting them to spawn. When I first got mine, it took a while until I saw any fry, but then, there was a bunch. the hard thing is when you want to catch some out of the tank to sell at the LFS or take to your local club meeting for BAP point, they all dive into shells. I learned a trick from a friend of mine, I have a small container that I cut a piece of lighting diffuser "egg crate" to fit, I set it on a couple of shotglasses so its elevated off the bottom. I set the shells that the fish are in on the egg crate upside down and they will come out. the instinctively want to be at the bottom, so will come out and swim to the bottom, when it will be easier to net them.

[ScottieB]

On 1/28/2022 at 12:08 PM, Andy's Fish Den said:

I have a pretty good sized colony of multies in a 40 breeder tank. I feed them a variety of crushed up flakes, the Xtreme nano pellets, frozen daphnia and live BBS. As long a you provide them with good water, food and shells I don't think that you will have any problem getting them to spawn. When I first got mine, it took a while until I saw any fry, but then, there was a bunch. the hard thing is when you want to catch some out of the tank to sell at the LFS or take to your local club meeting for BAP point, they all dive into shells. I learned a trick from a friend of mine, I have a small container that I cut a piece of lighting diffuser "egg crate" to fit, I set it on a couple of shotglasses so its elevated off the bottom. I set the shells that the fish are in on the egg crate upside down and they will come out. the instinctively want to be at the bottom, so will come out and swim to the bottom, when it will be easier to net them.

This diet sounds like a winner and good advice. Thats a good trick with the light diffuser. Another method is replace the shells with small capped PVC pieces. 

 

[M...]

Thank you for the advice! I will definitely get ahold of some bbs eggs. And I might try the egg crate trick in the future. Would you classify the multies as omnivores?

 

[Ryan S.]

I just started a similar multi tank in November with 4 from a fish auction. I think I had 3 males and one female.  I've got them in a 20 and got my first set of babies after about 2 months. Takes awhile to see them cause they hide so well when young.  BBS and micro worms are my live food, then I do a good mix of frozen and dry flake and pellets.  Been fun and easy so far. Good luck!!

Edited January 29, 2022 by Ryan S.

[StevesFishTanks]

I started my colony in a 40b with 7 Multifasciatus that subbornly took 6 months before my first batch of fry. Eventually they formed 3 small groups that bred. The tank was sand bottom with many escargot shells.  I quickly found getting any fry to sell out of the tank was nearly impossible and the breeding never really took off like I expected.

A good tip I got from Andres from BioAquatix was to separate out a proven pairs 1 male 1 female to their own tanks.  It seems counter to the common way of colony breeding them. But made sense there will be no predation or threats and they will start their own colonies a lot faster when they have the tank to themselves. You can provide limited caves using pvc elbows with a cap on one end. Bare bottom. 

After selling some off and rotating the stock in my tanks. I now house whats left of the original colony in a 20 long with aragonite bottom and escargot shells. Its about 15 fish.