55 gallons tank with jewels need advice (how to stop them from breeding)

jaysix79

hello guys i have a 55 gallons tank with 20 gallons sump/refugium/filtration which used to have 4 jewel cichlids... a pair of my jewel cichlids had babies so i move the other two to the bottom sump in the refugium. i week or two later the bottom pair had babies to in the refugium.

the top display tank has about around 30-50 babies who are 3 to 4 weeks old and the bottom has about 60-80 babies. the mortality rate of the babies seem pretty good and now i'm worry about having to many fish. i know i can sell them or give em away or trade them but i don't i can give them right away. according to some online calculator i can keep up to 16 fishes (ideal amount) in my 55 gallons tank lets just say fifty percent survive out of the babies.. that will put me to 50 new fishes and overload my tank.

another bad news is the display tank who has babies that are about 3-4 weeks old (babies are about 1/4 inch long) shows spawning behavior. if they spawn again are they going to kill all the old babies?. should move the all the babies in the refugium and all the adult jewesl in the display tank..


any advice would be appreciate it thanks again

john

DrunkFishKeeper

Haha just kidding, or course.

I'm not sure how to stop them from breeding, but I know that you could probably bring the babies to your local fish store/stores and they would be more then happy to take them off your hands and sell them

jaysix79

would like a large chain pet store accept them.... where i live all we have are the large pet chain pet store like pet smart and petco

iamntbatman

I've seen jewels for sale at Petsmart so they might take them from you. I'd wait until they're maybe 0.5" or so just so that they're a little more able to survive the trip to the pet store.

herbwin

Some chains/franchises will not take private fish, even donated, call around. Indie stores would be your best bet, but they may not want all you produce.

Other than seperating the sexes, you can't stop them from breeding. Fish gotta swim, and, you know... :)

Depending on how large the adult jewels are, if you want to reduce the fry, you might consider some kind of predatory catfish. It won't get them all, but will get some. Just make sure it has a refuge in the tank.
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AaronCombs

call around to see what you can find out.
In worse case, post it on craigslist to make some money.

I've never been able to have a large pet chain buy any animals/fish from me... however the LFS have.