I've done alot of reading on internet during my free time of how to breed them and when to introduce the female to the male so that they won't fight each other to death in the same tank.
We decided to give it a go since the female's tummy is bursting with eggs.
Red is female (shorter fins) and background is male (longer fins)
Look at the size of its tummy!! The tiny white speck under her tummy is egg spot (ovipositor tube) where eggs drop when spawning
As soon as the female was introduced into the tank the male went nuts and chased her around, not sure if he wants to pick a fight with her or tried to show off the masculine side of him.. After a while he got turned on and slowly swam across to her, body to body embracing each other. How romantic.
One thing that's missing was the male didn't make any bubble nest on the surface of water to nest the 0eggs.
Bubble nest male fighter supposed to make (Picture from Flickr)
So to help him out we cut a small portion of polystyrene and place the rougher side in the water to help trap some air bubbles, to pretend as his bubble nest.
Notice the air bubbles trapped underneath polystyrene
Anyway where was I? Oh the seductive moves. At that time it looked like the female can't wait to get rid of the eggs in her tummy. So after they danced for five minutes, they start to breed.
The female will swim with her head down, showed that she is submissive, and told the male: 'Come get me baby. Come'
Submissive female
Wonder how they breed? Well long story cut short. The male wrap its body around the female's body, embracing her and then kind of squeezes the eggs out of the females tum tum. There, short and sweet.
Like most things it's easier said than done. The male had to try for alot of times to get the position right (guys, don't we all know that *wink*)
Shit, not the right position
Aarrgh.. missed again
Almost got it!!
Yes! Aahhhh~~
Love you a little bit more
These few pictures were actually taken during lots of trial and error by the fish couple. Both of them locked in the breeding position for a few seconds and the male gently sqeezed the female's tummy.
Then WAH LAH!! Check this out!
The eggs!!
Now how amazing was that!! Everytime they bred, the female spawned more than ten sometimes twenty eggs. And for the whole time we were there, they spawned at least a couple of hundred eggs!! After each spawning, the male rushed to the eggs, picked them up with its mouth and then stored it amongst the bubble nest above.
Dad chasing eggs
And more eggs..
Male stored eggs into the nest
This kept happen again and again until the female had no eggs to give. We took the female out of the tank because the male started chasing her away from the nest (typical male) and furthermore it's the male's responsibility to look after the eggs until they hatch. It's their instinct. Thank God human are not like that, otherwise male wouldn't what to do with himselves.. well, I don't..
So from now on the male will just stay by the nest until babies actually come out from their eggs. Will be interesting to see how many eggs/babies actually survive this breeding process. We are first timer breeder for any fish so don't expect any WOW result. But what we saw last night was certainly a big WOW for us!
Will keep update of any progress.
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