I thought my yellow lab was holding again. However, I am more convinced she was protecting her fry due to the timing and the fact that her mouth was not enlarged for a long time. We finally saw a small baby about a month ago and had not seen anything since. We thought they had all died. Yet, there the baby fish was this week. It is still alive. We have only seen one. We are not sure if there are others or if this baby is the only survivor.
We have no clue what this baby has been eating. I assume messy scraps from my adult piggies. I have not been feeding flakes or brine shrimp often because thought there were no surviving babies. Do yellow lab fry go after smaller siblings???
Will mom be a threat to the baby at any point or due to her parenting style and protecting them, she will leave them alone? Also, does she help them hide outside of her mouth? We have noticed the baby is either smart and hides under areas were sand has been moved by one of our fish or we were thinking maybe mom is moving it and the baby stays hidden. My only issue with the second part is I thought once they get a certain size and she is not protecting them in her mouth, that they were on their own.
It is really neat to see. The little guy is so small still though. We hope the fish makes it to a decent juvenile size so that we worry less about it being someone's snack.
Besides the cichlids, will a bristlenose pleco or Raphael cat try to eat it?
I did feed all the fish brine shrimp this morning, just in case something survived. We do have to do our water change though. So, not sure if they will get vacuumed up or if they may be "hiding" in a cave if any survived.
