judy
04-25-2008, 10:57 PM
So, two spawning pairs. the turqs in the main tank, the female of which always eats the eggs within hours-- and I'm pretty sure they're fertile. She used to wait a day or two until they began wiggling, then she'd nosh down.
Second pair, two young red melons in the breeding tank who've been spawning every few days-- with the eggs going white, and fungusing. Well, this time, they spawned on the heater, but the eggs didn't fungus because I put in Fungus Cure as soon as I saw they'd spawned again-- but after 48 hours all the eggs were dead white. I had of course unplugged that heater and got a second one going.
But lo and behold if the turqs didn't then spawn in the main tank, on the algae magnet.
so, thinks I, red melons have been behaving perfectly as parents except that the male's too young still to fertilize (and this time, stupid location, because the flow from the adjacent Aquaclear would've pushed his milt away anyway).
So I grabbed the algae magnet, carefully positioned it right beside the egg mass on the heater, gave them some time (the male immediately went "ooooh, my eggies" and began fanning and hovering) and then just twisted the heater around to scrape the white, dead eggs off with the rubber suction attachment.
They stressed a bit, grabbed a couple mouthfuls of white eggs and tried to spit them back onto the fertile egg mass.
But I'm thinking they're buying the switch and I may just get a bit further this time...
whaddya think: red melons fostering a bunch of turq babies? I wonder if the babies will be able to latch onto the parents because they may not get dark enough for the babies to realize they're supposed to go there...
optimistically thinking, of course, that these eggs WILL hatch and wiggle and get to free swim stage...
Second pair, two young red melons in the breeding tank who've been spawning every few days-- with the eggs going white, and fungusing. Well, this time, they spawned on the heater, but the eggs didn't fungus because I put in Fungus Cure as soon as I saw they'd spawned again-- but after 48 hours all the eggs were dead white. I had of course unplugged that heater and got a second one going.
But lo and behold if the turqs didn't then spawn in the main tank, on the algae magnet.
so, thinks I, red melons have been behaving perfectly as parents except that the male's too young still to fertilize (and this time, stupid location, because the flow from the adjacent Aquaclear would've pushed his milt away anyway).
So I grabbed the algae magnet, carefully positioned it right beside the egg mass on the heater, gave them some time (the male immediately went "ooooh, my eggies" and began fanning and hovering) and then just twisted the heater around to scrape the white, dead eggs off with the rubber suction attachment.
They stressed a bit, grabbed a couple mouthfuls of white eggs and tried to spit them back onto the fertile egg mass.
But I'm thinking they're buying the switch and I may just get a bit further this time...
whaddya think: red melons fostering a bunch of turq babies? I wonder if the babies will be able to latch onto the parents because they may not get dark enough for the babies to realize they're supposed to go there...
optimistically thinking, of course, that these eggs WILL hatch and wiggle and get to free swim stage...