CichlidFish.com - Fish That Think.

my fiancee and i have a female red devil names Arnie who hatched sometime around 1991. he picked her up at a vancouver pet store in '92. when she was about 1&1/2" long. she was 12" long when i met her back in 1999, & living in a 76 gallon tank. MOST AGGRESSIVE FISH I'VE EVER SEEN! she was hearty, healthy, never stressed, never sick, always boss! she laid thousands of eggs in her lifetime, but as she was the only red devil in the tank for most of her life, the eggs obviously never hatched. (at times there were fire mouth cichlids, convicts and oscars with her, and always a pleky)
fast forward to 2003.
we went to a pet store and found a tank of red devils and a fish sale. so, we got three new red devils. put them all in the tank, and when arnie was ready to lay eggs again, two of the three new devils were killed. all of a sudden one day we saw a cloud in the tank...didn't know what we were lookin' at at first, and then we realized it was baby devils!! omg! now we had a male & a female! they hadn't bonded and the male was very little...only about 2&1/2"! but he'd done it! ok, so of the like 500+ babies, only 3 have survived...a small one(the SMALLEST one!), the one who was the BIGGEST right from the get go, and one in-between. one other time, again when no real mating ritual had taken place another cloud of babies showed up in the tank, but with that many mouths in the tank they all died real quick!
again fast forward to like a month ago.
we picked up another tank in march and seperated the babies (now 2yrs old) from thier parents. arnie and sly(the daddy), now alone in the aquarium, did do the mating ritual, digging all over the tank, cleaning off rocks together, lip locking, swimming around each other in circles, protecting each other. arnie started laying her eggs, and sly would pass over them right behind her. all was going well. she layed probably 1/4-1/2 of her eggs, when all of a sudden sly turned on her and started attacking her! she didn't defend herself against him, just sat there letting him attack. NOT TYPICAL ARNIE BEHAVIOR! within hours the eggs that were laid were gone. (not sure if pleky got 'em or sly) and in the morning arnie was in VERY rough shape. we removed sly in the hopes that we could save arnie, but she died over night last night:( before she died she was bright red, and pale white if that makes sense. fins were chewed up, she was gasping for air and her equilibrium seemed to be off. i can't figure out if she was sick because sly attacked her or, if sly attacked her because she was sick? she seemed fine!! we are shocked that even though he's still smaller than her he managed to kill her! does anyone have any thought on this? also, does anyone know if he may breed with his offspring? thanks for tolerating the long message!

15 years is quite a stretch! Sounds like she had a pretty good life!

My pair have just mated...plenty of fry... and my male is kicking the hell out of her now.The male will bond with a female in your tank from the offspring.I am trying to find out if I should remove the adults. The babies are eating like crazy and are about two hundred are flurishing under what seems to be the males guidance.