Green Terror behavior after fry....

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GOSKN5

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 24, 2011
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Danville, VA
Well my young pair have done it... and I have a question about the father....

The female laid about 100 or so eggs, they turned into wigglers a few days later and she dug a big pit in the sand under a rock and moved them all there... They are not quite free swimming yet but I expect them to be tomorrow or friday for sure...

Weird thing is the male has done nothing with the spawn... Doesn't even go over to the site except passing by... They also have not gotten any more aggressive at all... In fact the male has become very skittish and actually lost the noticeable hump that was forming... He was banging glass before the eggs now he hides when I walk over....

Is this normal for the first brood, or is this normal GT parenting? The female doesnt really run him off, he just seems to not care.... is he a deadbeat dad:grinno:

They are still young, and he was skittish before the mating behavior... but I had gotten used to and enjoyed his "baddest fish in the world" act while trying to mate.... now he is like a scared guppy...
 
When my GT's spawn the male hangs in the general vicinity but doesn't hover like the female does. He will however bang the glass if you get too close and flare his gills. The nuchal hump will come and go as the male tries to impress his potential mate or to show dominance over another male. As time passes you will find that they become better parents.
 
Males usually drop the hump and the hormones decrease right after spawning so they are really mellow. My male has never been really attentive to the spawn, he hangs out around the edge but the female keeps a circle of turf guarded around them and the male just looks on from a distance or swims by every now and again and the female nudges him away. What you have sounds like very normal GT behavior, when the young are about a half inch or so I would pull them and put them in a growout tank and then in a week or two you should see the female accepting the males advances again and his hump will grow a bit and he will get his tank banger attitude back again - well, until they breed again...
 
thanks, what is the best method for pulling the fry? also what time frame would 1/2 inch be from the time they are free swimming?
 
If you wait until they are 1/2" to pull them you could use a net. I however don't wait that long as the other GT in the tank like to eat the fry lol. I usually pull fry out after they are free swimming a week or so. I use a siphon hose and load them in a bucket just make sure if you use my method there is water in the bucket before you start siphoning fry out and keep the hose in the water in the bucket as the splashing will kill the fry upon impact.
 
how does the mother react when this happens? what about afterwards? She is super protective and dont want her to go into post pardum depression!!
 
Mine always got depressed when she lost all the fry, I usually left 10 in there with her even at 1/2 inch. With so few to care for she would lose interest on her own. A 1/2 inch will take about 2 months of growing out if you don't feed heavily. I preferred doing this because my female would lose weight when she was raising fry and if I pulled earlier she would lose even more weight breeding again. I ended up losing her after we moved this spring, I had pulled babies from her early to prepare for the move, and then she bred again, so I pulled those babies too and we moved. After the move put 12 babies back in with her but she was so distracted from moving that she ignored them and got depressed. In late summer she had settled in and was eating again but bred before putting a good amount of weight on and dropped weight again. I let her keep that batch and grew them out a bit and she got so thin I pulled her and put her in a tank with community fish hoping she would put wieght back on in the male wasn't around. She got even more depressed to the point she passed away. I had been trying deworm/antiparasite food and water treatments during some points too but she just wasn't eating much to begin with and nobody else in the tank had any issues. I have one female from her spring batch growing out now at 2-3 inches, I have considered breeding her back to her father but I don't know yet. It should also be noted that once they start breeding the females don't grow very much anymore.
 
Great information.... Thanks so much for the help.. I really don't want fry or any to grow out this batch.. I might just leave them or most of them and see what happens... Last thing I want is my female to get sick...
 
well the first brood made it about a week after free swimming... less and less each day and today they are all gone....

a few interesting observations... the female got tired of guarding them and eventually would leave the area for long periods of time... at that time some of my lemon tetras would pick off any fry that left the cover of the cave....

I also noticed that the mother did not fight off my catfish as hard toward the last few days... he probably took care of a bunch of the fry...

either way pretty cool, interested to see how it changes the next spawn... I might pull a few to grow out later on....
 
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