Been a few weeks since I've been on site, so I thought an update was in order!
Out of the original spawn, I managed to save 14 fry. I think the other pair in the tank had been doing some raids - they had no fry of their own - and had eaten some, so I pulled what was left and put them in another tank. They were about a month old at the time.
They are all doing fine and growing well.
Almost immediately, the original pair started prepping a spawn area and laid eggs within a few days.
All was well, eggs hatched, wrigglers wriggled, counted about 60 fry in all. The week before xmas they started free swimming when I looked in the tank one day, and there was the OTHER pair with a bunch of LARGER free swimming fry of their own!! Now I had two pairs in the same tank, both with fry! The second lot seemed to have about 30 fry which they obviously kept hidden in the rocks. I had no idea they had even spawned!
Needless to say a couple of weeks of tank battles commenced with the parents of each lot squaring off to each other all the time, but they seemed to leave each others fry alone. In fact, some of the bigger fry from pair #2 were mixing with the smaller fry.
Last Monday night, I waited 'til lights out and siphoned half the smaller fry out (with a few of the bigger ones mixed in!) as things were getting aggressive in there. Didn't want to lose them all.
Popped them in another tank - they're doing fine.
Tuesday (yesterday) I called LFS - they had space for one of the pairs - so I went about catching pair #2. (Pair #1 had better colours, so thought I'd keep them for the time being.)
Went a lot quicker than I thought as they attacked the net when I put it in making it a lot easier to scoop them out!
While I was getting ready to head out to the LFS, I noticed that all the larger fry had swam, all together, to mingle in with the others! Hey presto - surrogate parents! The adults hardly seemed to notice. (Well, they did have 60 fry again I suppose!).
Over to LFS and traded them in. Got £8 ($16)store credit for the pair, which was great. They were a decent size though and very healthy.
Today all is calm, all the fry look well and eating heartily!
That's about 100 Con fry I've got now, so once they all get a bit bigger, it's off
to the LFS again with the adults.
Phew!
Pics of the parents with the original 14. (Not the best, but my camera doesn't seem to like taking aquarium pics!)
