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!
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!