...now they started fighting!

[ferrax]

hi i have a pair that has spawned about 20 times now, the last few times the male hasn´t fertilized the eggs and almost imediatly after the female layed the eggs he proceeded to eat the eggs. I was giving up hope on them until a couple of days ago when i dimmed the light, and to my surprise i saw the male fertilize them like a pro.

Well everything was going fine until 24h after the spawn when they started fighting close to the eggs. they werre both constantly picking at the glass around the eggs. I think they were both being so protective of the eggs that they thought that the other was eating the eggs. they slowly got more agressive to the point where they started to knock the eggs off the glass.

My question is: Should I seperate one of the pair after the spawn or should i let nature take it´s course?

I managed to find around 3 eggs lying on the floor and put them in those small live bearer hatcheries to see of they will hatch. They are getting dark now so i guess he did fertilize them.

[shamsoo]

this thing has happened with my pair before, I had separated the female, male looked after 16 fry, but unfortunately they did not survive when I separated them

[Discusgeo]

ferrax my male's are mean after the female has done her part, here is how I separate them. Don't worry my pairs take good care of the fry on both sides of the egg crate. I get the stuff from Home Depot/Lowes hardware stores.

http://image1ex.villagephotos.com/1105542.jpg

[ferrax]

thx for all your suggestions. They spawned again and I left things as they were cause they were very dedicated to the eggs. A couple of days prior to the spawn I introduced a cory to see if this would take their mind off each other and concentrate on protecting the eggs from the cory. I don´t know if it was this that stopped them from fighting with each other but they did :).

The thing is that this spawn did not hatch, after 24 hours only a couple of eggs had turned white and the others hadn´t turned much darker. 48 hours later there were no white eggs and none hatched. I noticed a few were a bit darker than the others but no hatch, this lead me to believe that my GH was to high so I went out to buy a GH test kit as i didn´t have one, I usually only test KH. Anyhow my parameters are:

temp 28ºC
KH 2-3º
ph 6,8 - 7,0
GH 80 mg/l
amonia 0
nitrate 0


Any guesses to why no hatching. My male has fertilized once before so I am certain he is a male and is fertile, I have always thought that eggs that are not fertilized turn white but now I am totally confused. culd it be an external parasite?