Breeding Red Jewels

Question
Hi Karen.  I have a 130 gallon community tank.  I have 5 Tiger Barbs 2 Fire Mouth Cichlids 2 Bristle nose Catfish 1 Golden Catfish.  I also have 3 Red Jewel Cichlids in the same tank and 2 of them have started to mate recently.  I have noticed eggs laid on a large flat rock in my tank but after about 2 or  3 days the eggs just disappear.  This has happened twice.  I have never bread these fish before and was wondering what was going wrong.  I bought a fish hatchery but I'm not sure how they work.  Can you help me please?  

Answer
Hi Leslie,
Most likely your other fish have made a snack out of the fish eggs. That is most likely where the eggs disappeared to. In order to be sucessful when breeding any fish, you'll need to devote a spawning tank to the pair. Jewel cichlids lay their eggs usually on a flat surface such as a smooth rock. Up to 500 eggs can be laid and are carefully guarded. After roughly 5 days the eggs hatch and the pair of jewels often move the fry into a pit dug in the gravel. Jewel cichlids usually move their brood around to different pits on occasion. You can start feeding the babies newly hatched brine shrimp either live or frozen (live is more tempting to the fry) and powdered flakes or Hikari Brand's 'first bites' are good. Jewel cichlids can be bred in the community tank as you have found out, but the aggressive habits of the pair may be too much for the other tankmates as well as the risk of other fish sneaking in a eating the eggs or fry. Any of your fish may have been responsible for the loss of the eggs. So it would be best if you could setup ideally a 20gallon aquarium with an established sponge filter and gravel from your 130gal to instantly "cycle" it.
I'm not sure of the exact fish hatchery you are talking about, but if it's those little plastic of fine netting-type boxes then those just wont work for your jewel cichlid breeding. They are intended for pregnant livebearing fish such as platies, guppies or swordtails to be placed inside so they can have their babies in peace and to protect the fry from other fish.

If you're talking about something else, feel free to let me know!

Your best bet is to setup at least a 10-20gallon for your jewels, provide plenty of hiding places and spawning sites and I'm sure they will spawn.

I really hope this helps! Best of luck!
Karen~