For two years Tom and I fed them a multicolored flake food and spirulina flake. After a while the males of the group got to be about 8-10” in length and began to mature and form the nuchal hump on the forehead and the females, which were about 6-8” in length, seemed to be trying to “pair off” with some of the larger males. I decided to put in some concrete blocks and some large pieces of PVC pipes so as to give them some room to either be private or to have a place to avoid aggression. IT WORKED...! In a month or so I saw some small babies swimming in the tank. Several days later I saw some babies of a different size from the original babies, so I knew then that the colony was comfortable and acting as a good colony should act.

At that time, we had some problems with Tom’s mother’s health, which resulted in her passing away, and in addition, Tom wasn’t feeling very well either, so we had to sell the breeding colony to a breeder in Miami. We really didn’t want to sell the fish but at the moment it was all we could do.

What I really want to mention is that we did almost no water changes. All we did was added water as it evaporated. This of course led to a hardening of the water to which the fish really started to thrive. Another point...we didn’t feed any live foods. Only once a week, maybe, did I feed them any frozen brine shrimp.

It was quite an experience to watch this group mature into adult fish and I still do have one fish as a memory. Actually the deal was with the Miami breeder was to give him all of the babies. I really tried to do that but after he left for Miami I found this one little baby in the huge big tank. That was enough of a sign for me................I kept it!