Re: Anyone's commerc. bred rams raised their young?

[MikeFHill@aol.com]

I will apologize in advance for running on a bit, but I hope something I 
offer here may be of some use to someone.

I've had mixed success alowing my commercially raised rams to rear their 
young. I lucked into some very nice juvenile yellow-strain rams several 
months ago. When they matured I had one pair and a couple lonely males. Later 
I found a lovely German blue female at another shop, giving me two pairs. I 
had very good luck with the mixed pair. They spawned readilly, and both 
parents were extremely attentive to their offspring. A few days after the fry 
became free swimming, Dad would chase off Mom and take over brood care 
altogether. My all-yellow pair, however, have failed completely. They'll 
stick with the brood through the wiggler stage, but eat the fry as soon as 
they become free swimming. Sadly, my successful male lost an eye in a fight 
about two months ago. He is now well enough to spawn again -- a bit awkwardly 
-- but the broods have disappeared after a couple days. I  have a couple 
thoughts, based on those early successes:

--The productive broods were in a bare-bottom tank shared with a pair of 
breeding angelfish. Glazed tiles had been leaned against the inside glass as 
a spawning medium for the angels. The rams seemed to love the lean-to 
structures the tiles created. Soon after spawning, they would move eggs or 
wigglers under one of the lean-tos, and later move them to another location 
-- under another tile -- almost daily (the angels were removed by then).  
Tiles have not been present  for the unsuccessful broods, and  I now wonder 
if the the structures might have had a stabilizing effect on the parents. I 
plan to test the theory with both pairs.

--I've also wondered if the tendency to eat offspring doesn't have something 
to with stress caused by aggression between parents (these are very 
aggressive fish around spawning time -- they terrorized my much larger, but 
absolutely pitiful, angels). Perhaps it would be sufficient to remove just 
one parent soon after spawning -- another theory to test.

--Finally, I'm very anxious to see if any of my mixed-strain juveniles turn 
out to be such good parents. For that matter, I'm anxious to see what color 
strain they are.

I wonder if anyone has had similar observations or thoughts.

--MikeH.


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