During this mornings feeding, the whole clan was hanging around the front of the tank...together. Not something we see normally. I put in the blood worms and noticed Ma would eat one and then duck off into the big pot we have for a hidey hole.
She came back a little while later, ate one, and then ducked off again.
I finished feeding the brood, and retrieved my torch. I watched Ma. Into the pot she went, and was seen to be fanning an area with her pectoral fins (the steering fins at the front). I got my magnifying glass...there was definitely something there.
This is Ma inspecting her clutch of eggs that have been stuck to the side of the pot. At best guess, we think about a 100 eggs are there. We should have known they would breed this weekend, I'm getting them a new tank next week.
When I was setting up the tank they are currently in, they decided to breed in the 9L of water they had in, what is now, Kate's quarters. They really will breed anywhere as long as there is a cave/pot for them to breed in.
From 9L they produced around 17 fry, of which we believe 10 have survived. There are still a couple a little smaller than the rest, but I thought we'd done well.
Now they are in 50L of water. Five times the water may equal five times the fry... 85 - that wouldn't be too far away from our guess-timate of the egg count...if extrapolate that out to the survival rate we had last time of around 59% that gives us approximately 48 survivors from this batch.
Added to the current population, makes 60 fish. The new tank is designed to hold the 10 we got plus the Bristlenose catfish.
Just as well I found somewhere to sell all these fish when they get to be around 2" in length.
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