I might be outnumbered on this, so far, but I've bred a lot of fish and there's more than one viable approach and I've done it different ways. I successfully bred G. Tapajos (red/orange head geos) for several years in a tank with rotkeil severums and wild Peru angelfish. They're delayed mouthbrooders (lay eggs on a smooth surface, then pick them up after two or three days) and held their own in protecting eggs and fry until I wanted to collect them out to a growout tank. How well that works may depend on the pair, what else is in the tank, what you have for cover, how many fry you want to raise, etc. I set the tank up with a corner they could protect, with some rock, driftwood branches, etc.; even after they would start to venture out with their fry the red heads kept the other fish away, but, as I say, this will depend on the tank.
If they lay eggs on a piece of slate, driftwood, etc., you can also transfer this to a separate tank to incubate the eggs. An alternative to moving a female holding (mouthbrooding) eggs or fry is to create a divider in the tank. Makes it easier to collect the fry when you're ready. Certainly a maternity tank for a female or a separate tank for the breeding pair are two options.
I spent years stripping eggs or fry, raised many hundreds of fish this way, but I normally prefer not to anymore.
When I'm feeding a fry tank, especially species with tiny fry, I like to start them on crushed up freeze dried brine shrimp, which crushes up to powder pretty easily. Before I discovered this I simply crushed up flake (now my phase 2) or crushed up pellets. I also like to have some driftwood (or rocks, etc.) with algae on it, fry of a lot species will graze on it ime. But even when I've let parents raise fry in the main tank for a while, or when I've had the odd babies hide and surprise me one day when they show up and I didn't know they were there, they obviously found enough little bits of food to get by on.
Not disagreeing with anyone else. My point is there's more than one way that works, depending on personal preference and other factors. You may find your preference, or what works best for you, evolves over time.
Agree with having something over the filter intake for new fry (unless you set them up with a sponge filter only, something I never bothered with), I did either a foam pre-filter or attached a Tetra bio bag or something similar to the intake.
