kribs spawning

[BigJohnW@webtv.net (John Wubbolt)]

It never seems to amaze me how persistant some fish can be.  

I have a 55 gallon tank that is a mish mosh of fish species, basically
my "dump tank".   I hate to refer to it as such but when I need tank
space and I've got a single specimen or such, into this tank they go.  

Well not everything in there is part of the lonely hearts club.  I've
got a male and around 6 female kribs in there.   There are also some
gouramis, a few large angels, some tetras, a few large male killifish
and a larger pleco.   Well I knew that the male krib and the largest
female krib were trying to pair off.   They spent alot of time
displaying in front of each other.   Well to make a long story short,
after doing 3 straight days of double shifts at work, I came home
tonight and was feeding everyone when I noticed something strange in
this 55.   Everyone else was on the other end of the tank, including the
pleco.   So I stopped and sat down to find out why.   Sure enough under
the edge of the hydro sponge filter the female was totting around at
least 75+ fry.   So I watched her some more.   Her colors were intense,
even the male had absolutely bright red cheeks all the way back to the
anal fin on the bottom of the lateral line.   Hadn't seen this much red
on a krib male quite some time.   The part that I was watching the most
was the behavior of the parents.   Each parent would take turns running
at everyone else in the tank to make sure they stayed away from this
end.   Even the pleco knew better then come down here.   The twitching
the female did to get the fry to lay still was neat.   When she was
twitching to get the fry to do what she wanted, her colors would seem to
change.   Darker colors would seem to mean stop and be still, brighter
colors meant follow me.   Even the male seemed to get more intensely
colored when guarding the fry.   They are both taking turns guarding
their clutch of fry.  
Now how many of the fry are left in the morning when the lights come
back on will remain to be seen.   But I found it interesting watching
the behavior of the fry and parents while guarding their fry.    So
later on I went and watched the pair of Cacatuoides I have that are
totting around fry to see if these guys behavior was sort of the same or
different.  Well the female cacatuoides didn't change color while
bringing her fry around the tank but the same type of twitching went on
here too.   All the recent talk of maybe using behavior as part of
seperating species into which complex made me watch my fish a little
more then normal tonight.   Glad I did.  Sorry for boring everyone with
my ramblings.   

John



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