My 2 oscars finally did it!! About an hour ago i noticed about 1000 eggs below the tiger oscar and the albino is protecting the area as well. Now i don't now how to ensure survival of the eggs?? I have 2 african ciclids that keep stealing the eggs. Any suggestions. I'm also concerned that when they hatch, my filter is so strong that the fry will get sucked into it. I don't have a separate tank.

Firstly, have you seen the male hovering over the top fertilising them. It's quite obvious when he does that, they will rotate in circles. The female will lay a certain amount of eggs and then move out the way while the male swims over the top and they will keep doing this until all the eggs have been laid.

As long as the eggs are not directly next to the filter pipe, the fry shouldn't get sucked out. However, that is the least of your worries. If you're tried to hatch, you will have to try and keep them alive. If you leave them in the tank, you will have to make sure the water is absolutely in pristine condition. This means nitrate levels of less than 10 ppm. Fry will not tolerate poor water conditions. Then you've got to think about what you're going to feed them. You need to give them baby brine shrimp. If you don't feed them properly, they will all die. And then if all that goes well, what are you going to do with several hundred young if they survive? If you really wanted to make sure the young survive, you would be better off removing them from the tank once they are free swimming. Problem is, cichlids are very good parents and will protect their young so it may not be that difficult catching them. It would actually better at taking the eggs out of the tank before they hatch.

Good luck

Thanks for the info. I saw the male over the eggs fertilizing them last night, but when i woke up this morning all of the eggs were gone. Such a shame. Hopefully next time i can remove the eggs to a safe tank.

It sounds like your African Cichlids snatched them. You could put a tank divider in next time, Africans on one part, O's on another. As for the filter pipe, you could use a sponge filter instead, they're greatly recommended for fry fish.

If you do get to see some eggs the ones that are all white are unfertilized. If you do get some hatched eggs, you can feed them brine shrimp or you can get some liquifry no1 for baby egg layers. The next question of what are you going to do with all the babies. Even if only 25% survive that is still 250 baby oscars to find homes for. I bred some convicts once and it was good fun and they were easy to re home. One shop (out of 4) even gave me a credit for them

Thanks for all the advice. Maybe next time i won't loose the whole batch. I will continue to have a problem with my filter sucking up small fish because i have a large wet/dry filter wich has a large dump on top where the water falls. It produces a current strong enough to suck in small fish and food.

That must be one mad current. Is this not too much? Dont know much about wet/dry filter. Maybe you could explain in my question in the filters section so i will know more

How big is your tank and what kind of filter are you using? If you are worried about your filter sucking all your fish up, you can't have a very big tank. Lots and lots of people breed fish and don't have problems with the filter sucking babies up. If however you are using a very powerful filter on a very small tank then yes, there is the possibility you can have problems. I'm just intrigued to know your setup,

I have a 200 gallon acrylic nuvue tank with a 10 gallon nuvue wet/dry filter below the tank. It is suitable filtration. The only problem is that with a wet/dry system the water dumps from the top of the waterline into the filter. When i feed the oscars goldfish the have a tendency to swim close to the filter dump and they get sucked in. I put a screen over the slots in the dump and i hope that will solve some of the problems.

That's one powerful filter, sheesh!!! You can cover it up with open cell foam(foam that water can pass through, kinda like styrofoam, but not styrofoam). The water can therefore still pass through, but not the fry fish- just an idea. What kinds of Africans do you have? Mbunu, Haplochromes?