In the wild, many of the young hide in the spines of long spined urchins. I have seen several threads of aquarists making phony urchins for the young to hide in. I would have to find the threads to remember how they made them.

So I fed them and the female ate, but the male didn't. With the lights on now I can tell he still has the eggs. I can't believe it!

thats good just keep an eye on him untill you can see little eye's looking at you.

Well his mouth is only getting fuller! I'm assuming they are growing...? I haven't been able to see whether they are eggs or little fish yet though. I think he's somewhere around day 16-21.

Can you strip the eggs or fry similar to mouth-brooding cichlids. I used to have some yellow labs (electric yellow cichlid) and I stripped the fry after a few weeks.

Not sure with the sw version though.

Js

Strip them? I'm assuming you mean get them out of his mouth? I couldn't do that to him!!! Poor guy.

I found with my yellow lab cichlids, i had close to 100 percent survival rate after I stripped. If I let them spit in the tank, I probably had lower than 10 percent due to fish eating them.

Jonah

How do you do this? Catch the fish, squish his mouth so he spits, then put him back?

Sounds like rape in a dark alley to me...poor fish!!!

cant see that going well with a cardinal but what do i know about raping fish?
you should see little fish about the 4 week mark

This is a common practice in fw. I am not sure if it will work with sw. I had a two inch yellow lab that I stripped. Worked perfectly fine. I am not really following how it is rape but hey everybody is entitled to their opinion.

With the yellow lab I just caught the fish and open the mouth under water in a ten gallon container. The fish remains in the net only the head is out. That is how i stripped my cichlid. Some people do it differently. It took me less than one minute to do it.

SW fish might be a bit too sensitive for the process though. Cichlids are fairly hardy fish.

Js

EDIT: You can also increase the survival rate by taking the fish out and putting it in a 5-10 gallon on its own so when it spits out the fry, there are no predators.