Reply To: chasing
From what I’ve observed, my own CPDs (I had 5 females and 1 male) weren’t ready to breed when I first put them in my tank.
Once they had a place of their own, they physically changed in two ways – they got plumper (presumably getting a greater share of the food as they were previously in a community tank, and also I started using frozen brine shrimp which I hadn’t used in the comm tank), and they also turned much darker.
They spent the first two weeks cowering behind a large plant and I rarely saw them. When they started darting around the tank chasing each other, it wasn’t really a “spawning” type chase, as the females were chasing each other around too, and I saw different fish doing the “curved body” dance with each other, but not really in any sort of pattern. (Perhaps they were practicing).
The spawning chasing seems different to me than the “preliminaries”. It’s actually less “all over the tank” and seems more focused to a particular area. I think this is because it takes them a little while to work out where they actually want to drop their eggs. Once my male worked out that he wanted to spawn over a particular clump of java moss, he tended to only stay around there when “chasing”, and would wait until females would come by there and shake their tail, which seems to be a signal that they’re willing to spawn.
I would be VERY curious to find out when most of your fish engage in spawning, as my fish seem to have a definite preference for doing so about 30 minutes after I first switch on the hood light in the morning, and I don’t see it at any time other than the early morning.
It seems that after I give them their first feed in the morning, they stop spawning and go back to hiding behind their plant.