Crystal Eye Breeding?

Hi guys, I joined this forum because my prized Crystal eye is trying to breed. At least I think he is.

He excavated a cave under one of my big rocks and has remained there for the past week. The female spent maybe a day in there with him and has since ignored him.

I can see small portions of him and he is continuously fanning water through his cave.

Would this indicate breeding?

If it does what will happen to the fry since this is a community tank which has Angels, Gouramis and Tetras as well...

Any advice is appreciated.

I have split the topic so it has its own little area.

I would say that you are going to have some baby fish very soon.

In a community tank there will always be losses, the more predatory fish you have the more losses. However, you can do things to minimise the losses like adding more hiding places (rocks/logs/plants).

Congrads on the spawn (if it is one) and   to bristlenose world

There are several big rocks and I recently finished planting the tank with Hygrophila, Amazon Sword, Moneywort and some moss.

Here he is...

what a lovely looking fish

They spawned  

He is just beautiful! A gorgeous colour and eyes that make you melt. I hope the babies are beautiful like him. Is mum the same?
Best of luck with the other fish, I hope they don't get them.

The mom is what I guess would be the standard version. A basic dark green with some lighter patches. She is very shy and I've never been able to photograph her.

It looks like only 5 or 6 babies have hatched successfully. I think this is due to the cave he made being too small. The tank runs triple T5 lights so over-exposure probably occurred.

They are about 1cm in length and all are dark green.

Here is a frontal view of the big boy.



This is the community tank he lives in. 260 litres.


He made a cave under the big blue rock on the left

One of the little ones. They only come out at night so this was very difficult to take.