Unexpected eggs. Help please.

I'm gobsmacked. I found a smallish female brown BN on Saturday in my LFS and she looked so nice I bought her. She wasn't in the tank 20 mins (yes really) before she was in a cave with one of my two brown males and then I saw her in another cave with the other male. This morning when I looked there was a bunch of eggs in the cave with male no 2.
I wasn't prepared for this to happen so quickly but I have another tank set up with a gravel base containing some spare mollies & platys which I am giving away in a few days.
I have some urgent questions.
1. Should I move dad with his cave and eggs to the mollie tank? Or should I wait till they hatch?
2. I remember reading that either you should or shouldn't have gravel for the babies but can't remember which. Could someone remind me please?
3. What type of filter should I use. It currently has one with a large intake area which the mollies ignore but I know Baby BNs are quite partial to filters.
4. How long until they hatch?
I'm panicking because I have zebra loaches in the main tank and know they would eat the babies.
I thought fish were supposed to be relaxing not causing stress.

I wouldnt move them into the molly tank as the mollys will peck the fry when they come out, on the other hand the zebz should be fine but the loaches will try and raid the cave as they are bottom feeders...
my question to you is how much do you want fry???
move the loaches to the molly tank kill two birds with one stone by doing this.....
as for substrate i dont think there is no real rule on what to use for fry, i use gravel and alwasy have and have a 99% sucess rate with it...
as for them hatching it should take around 2 weeks before you see the odd few emerge, do partial water changes every other day but dont touch nothing, dont remove his cave please or you may disturb him plus if this is his first time then its best for him to do it himself with no help....

Hope this helps you june, well done and let me no how you get on and what you choose to do....

Curby,...............

Thanks for the advice. It is his first time and I wont move him. May be I can catch some when they are independant of him. Probably will be more than I could hope to raise anyway.
Not quite sure what you mean by "the zebz should be fine but the loaches will try and raid the cave". They are zebra loaches. Won't the Dad protect his eggs and fry?
It would be hard to catch the loaches in my tank as it is well planted incorporating caves made of lava and flat stones. If I could catch them I would get rid of them (nicely of course) as I only got them to eat an infestation of snails.
I do want the babies to raise. I had a hard job finding BNs in my area.

lol ignore the zebz bit i read it wrong for some strange reason i thought you said zebra's(plecs) and loaches lol....
just remove the loaches then....

Ha- easier said than done without wrecking everything. I think I'll rely on catching the babies.

Eggs laid Sunday and he's still fanning them. Water changes done. I can't see anything wriggling yet but snatched a quick photo when he moved.

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Nice clutch there you have plus the eggs look nice and healthy and they havent been kicked yet, id say your onto a winner...
Thanks for sharing the pics also.....

When I looked this morning the 'dad' fish was out of the cave feeding and the other brown male was in there fanning away. The 'dad' later went and sat on the cave contentedly watching. I got to see the eggs when he was moving about and they look the same as before. Is this normal? Or could they both be 'dads'?

Hope I'm not boring anyone. Here are the two dads in attendance. The original one is on top of the cave. As you can see they are totally different but I couldn't put a type to them. Anyone know?

[img][/img]

he hate to disappont but he just looks like my ancistrus teminkii, they come in various colours sometimes....

I am sure Bren can tell you I have one exactly the same which is about 14 months old...

will try to get a picture up for you shortly..

all the best on the off spring

by the way I was talking about the one on the cave..lol..

Not disappointed in any way. I love them all.

June mine usually hatch at about 8-10 days,

as curby said they look healthy so you should be ok...

it is quite common for the males to take it in turns fanning them....

I have two brother BN which always fan the eggs in turn...

I would say stay with a light level of gravel on the bottom as most others do... though I prefer sand in my tanks,
I do have my show tanks with gravel in since I think gravel holds too much waste when you have around 100 BN in there...lol..

I never leave loaches in any breeding tank any more... they stay in my other tanks... they can be far too agressive when young are around...

if your worried about the fry then I sometimes remove them to a grow out after about 4 weeks...
though my last two batches I left in the tank with the parents....

remember those water changes are important with the increase in bio load...

good luck:)

june wrote:

When I looked this morning the 'dad' fish was out of the cave feeding and the other brown male was in there fanning away. The 'dad' later went and sat on the cave contentedly watching. I got to see the eggs when he was moving about and they look the same as before. Is this normal? Or could they both be 'dads'?

It won't be long now , it's hard to tell at first as the newly hatched fry look like eggs with a tail.

All is not well today. The poorly bristlenose died overnight and now my biggest albino is showing same symptoms. SO I have moved lock, stock and barrel dad, cave and eggs to a tank I have running with some baby livebearers which I am trying to give away. So far he has been eating the algae in this tank which I was saving for the babies and not as far as I know been back to the eggs. I'm hoping that he may do and have covered the tank to make it dark, but if he doesn't then are the eggs old enough to survive with out him? They are 6 days old. Last night before I found the other poor fish I had more or less decided to move them as I saw one of the large doras hanging round there. What with two of those and 3 zebra loaches they probably wouldn't have stood a chance in that tank anyway. I've tried to do lesser of two evils. This is quite distressing.

This is getting to be a soap opera. Today I don't think the male has been to the eggs BUT when I looked in the cave they are starting to wriggle (hatch?) so all may not be lost.

Fingers crossed everything will go OK.

Sorry about the loss and I hope the albino is better soon

Really sorry for your losses its horrible when you loose good plecs...
I think you should be ok with your fry, just up your Oxygen if you have a flow tap this should provide what your missing male isnt giving...
good luck june...

bad luck on loosing the fish, always hard when you look them.

For the eggs just keep the O2 up as Curby said, once they begin to wriggle they are less prone to fungal attack etc so good luck with it

Monday. Thanks for your kind thoughts. The 'disease' is rampaginging through the BNs in my main tank. I lost my 'king', beautiful boy I've had for 4 years last night and another smaller male. Today I notice a brown female has two tubercle things by her interpercular spines. In the smaller tank is dad number 2 and the eggs which yesterday became little orange wriggly things and have today turned a dark colour still wriggling. It is very interesting seeing these daily changes but I realise I am not out of the woods yet wth them. I have put an airstone right by the cave entrance in the hope it might at least draw some water away to be replaced by new. Dad no 2 looks thoroughly fed up in this tank but it might save him to keep him there. I'm going to my LFS today to see what they advise and buy another gravel syphon so I am not going between the two tanks when I do a change.
Funny feeling to be sad about losing these fish while hoping the babies survive.

I now have 30+ babies growing at an amazing rate. The biggest are about 1.5cms long. They are every shade of brown and some beautifully marked and one albino.

Does anyone have a tip for cleaning the gravel as they are all over the place and I can't think how to clean it without sucking them up and injuring them. At the moment I am doing small water changes with a clean measuring jug. I've been feeding cucumber and JBL Novo Pleco chips as these contain wood and I can't move any bogwood from the main tank yet so the gravel will be getting polluted.

well done for some good luck recently..and 30+ youve done really well....
As for the cleaning issue welcome to the world of breeding bristlenose...im affraid there is no easy way of doing it....
i simply scare the young away from the area iam cleaning and instead of doing a full hit on cleaning all the gravel i will spread it out over 3 days splitting the cleaning into 3 sections........otherwise in future after a couple of weeks of the father fanning the eggs then pick his cave up and carefully tip them into a jug of tank water and move them to a another grow out tank this way your tank is ready for the next spawn and your main tank does not become overrun.....
anybody else feel free to add............
Hope this helps june ....good luck...

Ha I guessed as much. Just do it carefully.

june wrote:

Ha I guessed as much. Just do it carefully.

got it in one ....

If your really worried about sucking them up then try using a peice of standard sized airline tubing as you would a gravel cleaner, it will take a bit of time though. I've used tis method with small cichlid fry.