Just updating.
Two attempts failed with the black neons, so taking that as a sign it's not meant to be for now. First spawn the heater malfunctioned and fried the whole tank of fry. Second attempt the female developed dropsy and needed a course of antibiotics to recover. Figured best to leave them be and just enjoy the shoal of 12 I have already.
But my 55g I want more tetras up top, so I've set my skirt tetras to spawn, since I've only got 4 of them and local stock isn't very hardy to buy, so I shall see if home raised babies are hardier and keep a nice group of them for myself, with the 4 skirt adults and my 12 black neons in the same tank.
I did a video showing how I do my spawning setups for deliberate breeding.
Have well over 100 eggs
Of course also had a community spawn of my harlequin rasboras in my 20g, I found 7 eggs in the hornwort, so collected those and theyre in with my tetra eggs as well. Would be neat to see if those make it too.
Can see an egg in the hornwort here, on the string of lettuce root in the gap between the hornwort leaves. Little clear sphere.
I ended up keeping a 6th emperor, after all of the boys sold, there was 1 missed being netted in the tank, so I kept him. So 5 girls and 1 boy kept of the baby emperors. They're growing into young adults now.
A couple young ladies in these photos.
Hoplosternum punctatum fry are still growing, a lot of them are already spoken for as well. I do plan to keep one of them for my own though.