The good news is I had another Amatitlania nanolutea spawn recently. The bad news is that the brood was small and, once again, they were all gone in a few days. This is frustrating.
I have blogged about my struggles with this pair. Though they have spawned at least a half dozen times, I have only managed to get one viable brood. By viable, I mean up to juvenile stage.
I have changed the caves and other items in their tank a couple of times, wondering if there was something about the set-up that the female doesn’t like. However, I think they have spawned more consistently when I leave their tank alone. I posted about the female using one very specific cave early on, but that the male grew too big to enter. I know she was laying eggs but I don’t think he could fertilize them. None of her eggs hatched from the point he got too big to enter the cave. So I swapped it with caves he could fit into. You can see the various caves in the video above and the photos here in the post. Since I removed her other cave, they’ve spawned pretty regularly, but the fry are all gone within 10 days, with one exception.
If you notice, this tank has no substrate. I tend to keep bare bottom tanks, unless I have species that sort of demand a substrate (e.g., shell dwellers). Maybe my nanolutea would do better with some tiny gravel or maybe a gravel/sand mix.
I do have a pretty heavily planted tank (40g breeder), but it currently houses three female nanolutea. I don’t want to do a swap, though (i.e., move the breeding pair to the planted tank and the three females to the bare bottom tank). I could add a substrate to my breeding pair’s tank. What do you think? Leave a comment below the post.
What is interesting about this latest brood is that the fry were days older than normal when she allowed them out of the cave for the first time. Typically, her fry are much smaller than this when they exit the cave. If you watch the video above, you’ll see a lone fry swim up toward the parents. This is indicative of older fry. Prior to this brood, fry were so small that they would never get off the tank floor more than maybe an inch. So, not only was the brood smaller than normal, but they were larger before they exited their cave. I learn something new all of the time watching my fish.