phantom fry

so feeding my baby bristlenose tonight and notice at least 5 baby albinos fresh from eating their egg by the looks of em. now i have 4 tanks draining to my fry catching tank and three pairs of albinos ive been checking very regularily and havnt seen one fo the males caving at all, weird. so im think maybe ones snuck into a cave fertilised some eggs then just left them alone without fanning or kicked em out or something explaining the little amount of fry. check every cave and nook and cranny in all the tanks but cant find any fry sign or eggs. very strange. they do co incide with me stimulating with water changes about 3 weeks back. no real question i guess but anyone got any thoughts.

It could be possible that some discarded eggs were in a position that kept them aerated enough to stay viable. It's not unusual for discarded eggs to be eaten, hence why no more were found.

hmmm sound like it might be what happened proberly got lodged in my down pipe system i guess. kicking eggs out is that just regular occurance or the sign of a stressed male or something? just wishi knew which male it was so ican see about changing his caves to something he might be happier with.

Well look at it this way. Now that a pair have spawned they will do again soon without you having to trigger them. Keep an eye on them and try not to disturb. You should see a male caving within the next week or so and a nice gravid female hanging around the cave. That's the phantom parents. Well hopefully, can be a bit longer before they breed again. Depends on the individual fish really

true yeah the females have all bee ngettign big an fat and gravid for a while now but no men taking up caves ,