I did my first female stripping yesterday and wanted to tumble my eggs. As my spawn yields were so low and probably mostly due to being eaten by my larger cichlids and bichirs in the community tank. This was my first experience and in believe I may have tumbled my eggs to hard. I dialled down the tumbler as best I could but I feel some are already damaged as they have changed shape having a rounded top with a cone shaped bottom and The cone portion is considerably darker than the rounded spot to where as the eggs are 2 toned. Am I right to thinking these eggs are no longer viable to hatch fry? I thought that my eggs needed t constantly move and that them spiralling the way they were was good til I did some video watching and forum hopping on the subject matter. In all I was able to strip 60-70 eggs between 2 of my females which is over 12-14 times the amount of fry I was getting by letting them hold to term in the tank. My females have held their eggs over a week n ahalf so I know it was optimal time to strip them.
As of this morning I had a big accident. My albino senegalus got caught on the rim of the breeding net and it separated from the suction cups and all of my fry were gobbled up for breakfast. And aside from that trauma my senegalus wound up on the floor but luckily he wasn't out of the tank very long.