By Ron Coleman , 1999. The convict cichlid, Archocentrus nigrofasciatus , is an excellent choice for experimenting with parental care in cichlids. One of the most fascinating things about cichlids is that not only do they breed in aquaria right in front of our eyes, but they take care of their young as well. The diversity of ways that cichlids provide parental care continues to fascinate hobbyists and scientists alike. Parental care in cichlids ranges from biparental substrate spawners which fan and guard the eggs, then protect the wrigglers and free-swimming fry, all the way to maternal, paternal, or biparental mouthbrooders which take the eggs and fry into their mouths for extended periods of time.
Parental care is costly to the parents providing it.
They risk injury from attackers, lost opportunities to feed themselves, and delays in producing subsequent broods. We have known for decades that if you present fry to parent cichlids which either have their own young or have recently lost them, there is some chance that the parents will adopt the new fry. It doesn't work in every case and many researchers have tried to understand why and when it does. The answer, increasingly, is yes. In Costa Rica I have observed a set of parents with fry moving upstream only to encounter a second pair with fry moving downstream.