30 Gallon Tank

[JB_OrchidGuy]

What are you going to do with all the babies!?!? What do those blue rams look like anyway?

 

[JBL]

Most of the babies will most likely not survive.  They often don't get it right the first time according to the attached article which has pics of males and females.

http://images.google.com/imgres?....rl=http

I was mistaken when I said the male and female were together for a week.  I put the male in the tank just two days ago (Friday).  As I recall, her ovipositor was sticking out before then.

It's really cool watching them take turns watching over the eggs.  The other fact that might kill off fry is they chose a spot near the filter intake.  I had to pry an oto off the intake this morning.  He swam in spirals for awhile but seems ok.

 

[Clint]

Otto's are funny

It's hard to imagine a cichlid that's that small.

 

[JBL]

Yeah, they're a laugh a minute! The rams are small but beuatiful coloring. They're beating the neons off the eggs like centurions--very fun to watch.

 

[JBL]

No ram fry survived from the first batch hatched on Christmas day. They were probably sucked in by the filter or the neons ate them. But they just laid another batch in a better location!

 

[zedlepp]

congratulations JBL on the spawn! if you really want to save some fry, you could try siphoning some of them out with some airline tubing into a small tupperware container, and feed them microworms or better still, baby brine shrimp!

 

[JBL]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try assuming I can get to them in time. Will they continue to do this every two weeks?! Worse than bunnies...