When she turned around and her underside faced towards me, the white eggspot proved me right.
So a new breeding tank was setup in order for the pair to do their thing and then seperate them from the babies. It's not cruel to do this after spawning because as past experience told me that both parent tend to eat thier offsprings.
As photo shown, the female was placed in a bottle whereas the male was swimming freely in the breeding tank. The purpose was to let both of them get used to each other before beating each other to death. The female teased the male so much that the male's testosterone was up the roof. He started to swim like he was possessed. He darted and flared at her but unable to get to her.
While he was doing that, he was busy blowing bubble nest at the other side of the tank to house babies.
Lots of bubbles
After a couple of days when the nest is kind of big enough, I introduced the female into the tank with the male. The male just went crazy!!
He kept chasing the female around and sometimes nipped her fins. Apparently this is how they show their love. I know it sounds weird but don't some people have a hobby called BDSM (Bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) too? It's all about love baby~
From time to time the female will hide behind the plants from the male, which I wouldn't blame her really. While the male beat the crap out of the female, her body showed vertical bars.
That was the sign showing the female was ready to drop her eggs but when? We don't know until they were ready.
One thing I like about this whole process was the male tend to show off his macho attitude as well as his colours so that the female will attracted to him.
What stunning colours!!
And we waited and waited for miracle to happen but it didn't. Couple of days later there were still no signs of any spawning process, so with disappointment, I seperated the female from the male so that he wouldn't eventually kill her..
Last night before I went to bed I decided to check on the male to make sure he was okay after these few days of blowing nest and chasing female (could be quite a tiring job, specially chasing females, so I'd been told). To much of my delight, this was what I saw!!
See the tiny white spot beside the male? BABIES!!!! We were so surprised as we didn't see the pair spawned at all!! Maybe they did it at night when we were asleep. Most sex seemed to happen at night when there was no one around...
And so the male started his duty, picked up his kids which dropped to the bottom of the tank with its mouth and spat them back to the bubble nest. And he just kept doing that. Double thumbs up for his dedication, until he starts eating them and hopefully it will not happen this time.
I am so enjoying this experience right at this moment!!
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