chasing
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well i havent had any fry since iver had them (about 1 1/2 months i think)
but today theres about 4 males chasing 1 female around the tank (mainly in the open space about the java moss
is this a sign of breeding at all?
thanks
chrisIn the scientific article that was published on CPD’s breeding, it mentioned that after spawning, rival males were seen going into the spawning area immediately after another couple had spawned, and they speculated that this -might- be in order to eat the eggs of a rival male.
This makes a kind of evolutionary sense, because if another male’s genes are the ones being passed on, it reduces the chances of your own genes surviving. But the observer wasn’t -sure- the eggs were being eaten because the spawning material blocked his view.
If the other males -do- eat eggs of another male, it might be interesting to try bringing out the other males and leaving only one in the tank. In my own tank, I have 5 females and only 1 male (just bad luck, as I bought them when they were young and neither the shop assistant or I knew how to sex them at the time). But they’re producing fry, and the other females don’t seem too interested in what’s happening when one of the other females is spawning.
-z
Well I have 2 males and 3 females…
Maybe this is the excuse I need to get another tank!
After all, a 10 gallon tank is only 13 dollars or so at petsmart. Then again, a heater is bloody expensive.Actually, I need another tank anyway. I’ve nowhere to raise any fry right now, and it would probably be better if that was all in place before they arrive.
That makes 4 tanks… No, no, what an I thinking, I don’t have space for that many tanks. Drat.
well they did breed and i have found 4 (i know theres more as i can see them and when i take the hood off there gone)
but it seems a bit of a time gap between the fry and chasing maybe its a different bunch
chris
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.
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