Orange spot Bristlenose Confusion. The mystery Eggs!!!!

Hi
5 days ago, we were watching our Orange spot Bristlenose showing signs of laying eggs. our male has been fanning the entrance of a cave for a couple of days and that morning i did a 70% water change (by accident) . The female squeezed into the cave backwards and then came out and the male went in head first. they did this a few times, but i could not see if there is eggs in there as the cave is to small to see past the male. He has been fanning every day since. Today i finally managed to see in his cave and there was no eggs .
So i decided to remove my 3 small caves that i had in the tank and replace them with bigger ones, as i have suspicions that they were to small for the OSBN. After i did all this i had a look in the two other caves that i took out and to my surprise there was eggs in one of them. there has been no male fanning this cave though i have got a common and a albino in the same tank.
Now to my questions. Sorry about the long story!
A; Is it possible that the female OSBN could not lay in the males cave so she chose another one instead (i did see her back into this one the same night)?
B; i did not see the male osbn leave his cave so are the eggs fertile?
C: is there a chance the one of the other common males fertilized them? Are they fertilized at all?

or they could be from my albino female though i did not think she was big enough yet.

as i have not seen any other male fanning the eggs i removed them and put the in a fry saver with an air stone as its all i had.

Any help and advice would been much appreciated as im quite new to this.

Thanks,

Spekky.



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To my knowledge females don't lay in caves without males. So I think what's either happened is your orange spots or the other two have spawned in the cave. Then you've either caught the male out of his cave so he's hiding or he's just abandoned the eggs. As for who layed the eggs well I don't know as it could be either. Bristlenose do surprise some people who think they look too small or too young to breed, coz if they want to breed they will lol. How big and old are the bristlenoses?

my money is on the orange spots. My male used to do this every now and again if the water was not quite right. He would trap the female, they would spawn then in a few hours he would bugger off and do something else. It was always such a pain as the eggs were always super sticky and really hard to get out into the tumbler. I would check that your water is nice for breeding as if mine strayed over pH of 7 he would leave the eggs and i think they were too sticky for him to boot out.

Thanks for the help.

I think it was that the cave was too small for the female so i have placed some different caves in there and ill see what happens. I am fairly sure that the water was fine as it was a ph of 7 and i do weekly water changes usually 30%. I have also got high water flow in the tank which i think he likes as he chose the cave that's got the flow going straight past the entrance.
Lets hope i have better luck next time!!!

cheers!