Thought I've seen it all.....

[jajeanpierre]

I had this problem with deremensis after about a year in captivity. WC males would never hesitate to court females or fight males. Until they were in captivity for a year. Then they lost all interest. For me, it was that my room was far too warm, and they never got a cool down period. Moving to a cooler basement in the mountains fixed that.

What worked at the time was letting them see another male. Every day, for a couple weeks. My WC male went from being so calm I thought I could leave them together to charging the smaller male so violently, I got stabbed in the palm of my hand by him as I blocked his attack - he broke the skin of my hand with his attack(this male came in with needle straight, unnecessarily-sharp horns).

After he decided fighting was in his blood, he had no issues with the females.

This thread and your post are so timely!

I have two wild caught males (a quad and a gracilior) who have bred females for me in the past who are now being very aggressive towards the females. They've been in captivity just over a year.

Thanks for the tips. Good luck Ralph. Please keep posting your observations. I imagine CITES will soon add Equatorial Guinea the list banning export of quads/graciliors. We need all the genes we can get.

 

[Dooley1]

I have never had a single time where male competition sparked breeding interest. It's nice to see it has worked for Eric and others, but never once has it made even a slight difference for me. I would also never cohabitate quads like I will do with other species. Even in a large enclosure, more than simply husbandry issues, it adds the problem of not seeing copulation, not knowing when the female is due, or if the clutch she is carrying is even fertile. I like more control than that.

Ralph, I had similar experience to you the first time I bred quads, and thought it would always be like that. Instead, I've experienced mostly weak breeding responses, mixed with males that are very eager. They are probably seasonal too, and the father of many of my current babies is only interested in breeding around November. Then he goes back to ignoring the females.

Janet, I wish I had a better answer for you. Usually I just wait and keep trying and eventually it happens.