Re: What went wrong?

[Thomas Price <tprice@u.washington.edu>]

Fish are kind of strange about these things.  I would think that mom would
have eaten the eggs right away, if they weren't viable or if she had bad
parenting instincts.  I am including a paragraph from an article I wrote
recently about my nanacara anomola's spawning behavior.  Two disclaimers:
(1) ok, so they're not apistogrammas, but they're pretty similar fish in
habitat and behavior (2) I don't have tons of experience, but I do seem to
have gotten lucky with these.

	"To date, the breeding pair have had two successful spawns.  In
both cases, the female has laid the eggs on a piece of driftwood protected
by a really impressive amazon sword plant.  About two days after spawning,
the eggs hatched.  The female took this opportunity to move the babies to
a nearby location.  For one of the spawns, the nursery moved to a large
leaf closely sheltered by another leaf.  On the second occasion, mom moved
the baby fish to another location on the same piece of wood.  After about
another week the fry became free swimming, and mother could be seen
touring the lower regions of the tank with a swarm of fry around her.
This particular fish is an excellent mother, aggressively defending her
brood even from the full-grown angelfish that share the tank.  "

So, the mother moves the hatchlings after a few days, at which time the
stick to driftwood, or a leaf, flopping around.  After about five more
days, the fry start swimming around, and can be seen near the mom.  If mom
is defending a particular area of the tank, I would wait it out.  If she's
not defending, and is acting normally, whatever that is, I would assume
you've had another abortive spawn.

Tom

On Mon, 19 May 1997 camillus@dreamscape.com wrote:

> My son recently purchased a pair of Apistogrammas.  On April 19, there
> were eggs on the side of the tank.  The next morning they were gone. It
> is a community tank.  I think one of the other fish was the problem
> during the night.