Black emperors

I had "killer cherries" once too, I was shocked! I'd kept them before, little peaceful fish. My "evil" males were super red all the time, I wondered if they'd been hormoned or something after the dominant male killed the others, M & eventually F. Of course, I think they were among the largest fish in the tank too... Just shows you never can tell for sure.
Exactly why I'm wary adding more to my cherries.

Ive got 1 male and 5 females, and the male is a weird mix of white, brown, and red lol never full red but he spawns with the ladies often all the same. Of course because of the sanitizer incident, my 6 cherry barbs are left mostly to fully blind.
Another reason not to have aggressive fish--the blind ones don't stand a chance to avoid them.

These emperors though have the right amount of sass but keep it to themselves. And not even physical. Its a good healthy balance.

Oh, and when I got the Emperors in the mail they were quite faded. Photo taken during acclimation. I acclimate in a container and slowly add tank water to the container, drain it out and add more until its full tank water, then dump into a net then add them to the tank. Over the course of an hour or so
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So for whatever reason one of my 2 females died the other night and no idea why, but as I'm left with just 1 female, time was running out....

So I set them up to spawn.

Ive got eggs starting to hatch today :) so fingers crossed.


Hands down these may be my favorite tetra species so far, theyre the perfect level of activity and attitude while coexisting and not harming anyone.


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Sorry wifi glitch, double post
 
So tiny! Found one baby, took quick photos of him and returned him to the nursery.
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Very cool. Tetras (or many South American fish at all for that matter) are something I've never had good luck breeding which has a lot to do with the fact that I've always lived places with relatively hard water. I can only think of a handful of South American fish I've had spawn for me.

WYite
 
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Starting to see some fry more and more... should be a day or 2 then they will be free swimming.
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Circled the fry for those who need help seeing
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