Well I'll be...P. Humilis 'Friya' spawn

[chriscoli]

I had noticed that the Pelvicachromis humilis 'Friya' had been colored up, sharing a cave, and the female had plumped up and had her tube down....but they occasionally look this way, so I thought nothing of it. Well, I noticed yesterday that they're escorting around a nice herd of fry! I guess they finally figured it out!




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[festaedan]

Congrats!

 

[mchambers]

That's great!

 

[verbal]

Congrats very nice spawn.

 

[dogofwar]

Very nice - spring is in the air!

Those are pretty good-sized fry. First day free swimming?

Matt

 

[chriscoli]

Good question, Matt....I was wondering the same thing. I didn't see the eggs, so I'm not sure if them normally have large fry but I strongly suspect I may have missed noticing them for a few days so I think they are not first day swimming. That being said, I'm certain that they're not weeks old either.

 

[mchambers]

My guess is that you just missed them. I've had that happen with various Pelvicachromis. The fry are small and stay in a tight ball the first few days.

 

[zackcrack00]

Nice!

 

[Andrewtfw]

Congrats. Looks like a good amount of fry.

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[chriscoli]

My guess is that you just missed them. I've had that happen with various Pelvicachromis. The fry are small and stay in a tight ball the first few days.

If that's the case, the. I've missed them for a month or so. These are quite large. Keep in mind, these are not small taeniatus types, either....dad's at about 4.5 inches, mom's at about 3.

 

[chriscoli]

So I lost all but two of that previous spawn....everything was going well and then one day I was down to two juvies, which looked like a male and a female. Then I lost the adult female a few months later. Fast forward a year, and the original male has paired up with the young female and he's offed the young male. So I'm back to having a pair again.

The new female is quite aggressive with the male, and so I figured I'd better get around to moving them into the 4 ft tank I've always talked about doing. I moved them into a 33long with some emperor tetras about two months ago. The females been staying in her favorite cave a lot this week so I took a look this morning and there are wigglers! She's not as brilliantly colored as her mom was, so it was a little surprising to me that she'd been on eggs.

 

[chriscoli]

Lost the previous spawn again, but they've spawned yet again. This time I removed the mom and fry to another tank to see if things go well. So far so good. Mom's been escorting the fry around and they're putting on size nicely. I noticed her acting strange the other day and displaying stress bars. I also saw a few fry actually picking at her fins and skin so I decided to put her back in the tank with the male and let the juvies continue to grow out in their own tank. She's de-stressed and is happily shimmying in front of the male. I have noticed a reduction in the number of juvies but there are still a decent number. Hopefully they'll do better this time around.

 

[mchambers]

Good luck with them.