When I was getting ready to leave on a Thursday to attend my son's Navy graduation in Illinois, there was a lot of prespawning behavior going on in my L144 tank. I hated to leave not knowing what would happen. There were two females trying to get in the cave with one male and that male had bred with a female the night before and there were eggs in the cave. Too early to tell if they were fertile, I don't know which female went in with him. And my male "lonely guy" finally had a female over at his cave. He has not bred with any of the females yet so I worry will he kick the eggs out of the cave or something like that. But if he's going to spawn with one of the females who is also spawning for the first time, those eggs won't be fertile so nothing much to worry about there. I do worry about too many ladies going in with the male in the other cave. If too many females lay eggs in there, he'll know he can't fan them all and that's another reason a male will kick out a batch of eggs. But off I went to graduation...they were on their own and if somthing gets messed up....well they'll be ready in about another 3 weeks to have another go at it!
When I arrived back home on Sunday afternoon, I had much to do in a short time before going to a family BBQ. When I looked in the first cave I could see a large non fertile white spawn on the left and several orange eggs on the right. Then I spotted an egg with a tail showing at the entrance to the cave and tried to swoosh it back in before one of the embers tried to eat it. It was shortly after that that I spotted a large clump of orange eggs in the front of the tank on the gravel. I didn't think he kicked them out, figured there was too much activity going on in that cave and they accidentally got rolled out. But I didn't have time to set up a breeder net or anything, running out of time I thought, oh well, there's always next time. At this point I don't know if they've been laid there or moved out of a cave. A couple of adult L144's were starting to eat eggs. So off I went to the BBQ. When I got back home, there was still a mound of eggs there so I grabbed a super duper kitchen gadget egg saver which you will see if the first picture, netted the eggs, threw them in the super duper kitchen gadget egg saver, and floated the egg saver by the filter outlet in my new hatched fry tank. Didn't expect anything to happen. Monday after work, they were all hatching and wiggling their tails and huge bright orange egg bodies. So....introducing the surprise hatch which are now 10 days old!
When I arrived back home on Sunday afternoon, I had much to do in a short time before going to a family BBQ. When I looked in the first cave I could see a large non fertile white spawn on the left and several orange eggs on the right. Then I spotted an egg with a tail showing at the entrance to the cave and tried to swoosh it back in before one of the embers tried to eat it. It was shortly after that that I spotted a large clump of orange eggs in the front of the tank on the gravel. I didn't think he kicked them out, figured there was too much activity going on in that cave and they accidentally got rolled out. But I didn't have time to set up a breeder net or anything, running out of time I thought, oh well, there's always next time. At this point I don't know if they've been laid there or moved out of a cave. A couple of adult L144's were starting to eat eggs. So off I went to the BBQ. When I got back home, there was still a mound of eggs there so I grabbed a super duper kitchen gadget egg saver which you will see if the first picture, netted the eggs, threw them in the super duper kitchen gadget egg saver, and floated the egg saver by the filter outlet in my new hatched fry tank. Didn't expect anything to happen. Monday after work, they were all hatching and wiggling their tails and huge bright orange egg bodies. So....introducing the surprise hatch which are now 10 days old!
