Help with Leleupi Adults and Fry

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Dego510

AC Members
Oct 22, 2009
66
1
6
Chicago, IL
I need help deciding what to do with my Leleupi adults and fry.

Let me give you some background first. I have a 125G with 10 4" Mikula Frontosa, 5 Clown Loaches, and 5 Leleupi. Everyone gets along great except for the Leleupi but I know they are pretty aggressive toward each other. There seems to be a couple of them that need to retreat to the top of the tank and hide behind the filter outputs. It's not terribly bad since they aren't always there.

A week or two ago, I noticed that a certain Leleupi would always hide in a shell on the right side of my tank but assumed it was to get away from the aggressors. (Oh, let me mention that I bought them 1.5 months ago and they seem closer to juveniles rather than adults) As I was re-scaping my tank last night, I decided to pick up the shell to move it but peeked inside to make sure the one fish wasn't in there. To my surprise, there were a ton of fry in there so I gently put the shell back down.

Here are my questions:

1)I want to keep the fry, so how long before I remove them and put them in their own tank? My guess is that they are already a week old since they look free-swimming.

2) After I discovered the fry, I spent an hour observing that shell. I know the mother and figured out the father as he's always defending the shell. Should I remove the 3 other Leleupi that haven't paired?

Thanks for your help!
 

Pittbull

ALL BOW DOWN TO THE FIN GODS
Apr 14, 2007
7,549
4
0
Louisville Kentucky
Real Name
Mike
If you want the fry to survive then you will need to remove the shell with the fry inside and they will be fine with out the parents place them in a smaller tank, if you leave them in the tank with the current stock possibly a few will survive even if you remove some of the other Lelupi.. Other than that you may want to add a lot more rocks and other retreats, these guys like it rocky..
 

Dego510

AC Members
Oct 22, 2009
66
1
6
Chicago, IL
Ok. I'll move the shell with the fry into a 10 gallon. I'm also going to remove the 3 Leleupi. Can I assume that the 2 Leleupi that produced fry will continue to get along and breed?
 
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