Cichla kelberi breeding, guarding eggs

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So this tank was supposed to be a temporary grow out tank for this group of Cichla kelberi, and they where supposed to move out any day. This is one of the reasons why the tank looks so bad, since I haven't bothered to put any effort into scaping it...

But then they started to show some breeding behaviour and I decided to let them be for a while, to see what would happen... After all, these fish are not even 1.5 years old. They where bred by a friend of mine in May 2018.

About 1-2 weeks later, I was greeted with this sight! The parents did guard the eggs pretty good, and kept ALL other fish away from the eggs. But as you can see in the video, some of the plecos got to the eggs anyway. This was when a lot of people where in the room to look at the fish, and they got distracted and scared... As soon as we left the room, just minutes later, the parents where aggressively guarding the eggs again, also as you can see in the video (when I sneaked up on them, later on).

I will probably not be taking the eggs to raise them, as I want the fish to learn to take care of them themselves. We'll see how it goes...