Baby convict mothering Jaguar fry?

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cnote

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Mar 24, 2004
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Whats up all long time since i last posted. anyways i have a weird but cool thing to share. its a long story but ill try and keep it short.
a while back i bought a jaguar and thought it was kinda cool and loved its aggression. thanks to mojo i was able to sex it and found out it was a male. i bought three more hoping to find a willing female for my new "prized" cichlid. low and behold on the third purchase i had a pair. i left them all alone in a 55 and there they stood. a month ago they bred and me being a novice didnt know what to do so little by little the fry disappeared. fast foward a month.
i recently overhauled my 30 long for some australian crayfish i picked up. the tank use to house a breeding pair of cons and 2 jd's i was hoping would give me some grand kids no luck but i did get a couple of baby cons. anyways i moved them and put the two crays in the tank and left the two tiny baby convicts. they're about 3/4 of inch long. i put an egg crate partition for the new jaguar fry. yes jaguar fry. the two jags did the dance and i now have a few hundred fry after my first dibockle(sp. check)
the coolest thing started to happen. every day checking on the fry and watching them go from eggs to wigglers i would gently fan my index finger over them as to fan them like mom would do. the baby convict started pickin at my finger. i though he/she was being playful. i decided to watch the con in action and noticed this baby was mothering the the new babies. if one wiggler would drift away from the pack because of the water current she would pick it up and bring it back to the rest. thats coo. i know in some circumstances convicts will "adopt" other convict fry while nurturing their own. but a baby con raising baby jags thats coo. i figure the cons got to be a female and is just going on natural instinct that makes sense. anyways i felt it necessary to share this ive read hundreds of posts on this site and others and never heard of this.
thought u people might find it interesting and insightful. have fun fishing... i mean fish keeping :D
 
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