Hi everyone:)

I'm new here and loving it.
I have had to do some quick learning about the breeding of BN cause my Commons laid a clutch on Sunday night.
I never planned on breeding them but I had no choice to put them together in the one tank, so I guess it was inevitable.

All seems to be going ok, dad is fanning but he does keep taking off for a couple of minutes at a time and often. I don't know if this is ok or not.

I discovered earlier that he has kicked a small batch of the clutch out and was wondering why they do this?

I can't seem to find any other threads to explain this to me.

Thanks very much for any info given:)

He's only a young male and still learning, my albino longfin male is doing the same thing. Not sure why they boot the eggs (my old male booted eggs first 4 spawns before getting it right) only thing you can do is not disturb him. About the eggs you could always place them in an egg tumbler.

From everything I have read on here, I sort of expected that this first time could be a bit touch and go.

I don't have a egg tumbler and I have been looking at the DIY ones and I can't work out for the life of me exactly how hey work, so I will have to do some more research.

The one good thing though is, the eggs are now being tended to by my Cheery shrimp, so they might still have a chance from what I have read on here.

The 2 BN live in my 3ft Cherry Shrimp breeding tank and were never going to be used to breed but now that it's happened, I'm happy, cause I love seeing nature take it's course like this.
I'm just not sure what I am going to do with all these fry that are going to keep getting born as I have no other tank for my BN to go into where they are safe.

Thank so much for your thoughts, I am just curious why they do this.

If you don't have an egg tumbler then you can use a breeding trap, the type for guppies etc, with an airstone below it. I've used this method in the past and had great success.

There are several reasons why eggs can get kicked, as kfenk has pointed out they may take time to learn the finer points of breeding. Sometimes the surface of the cave can be to smooth for the eggs to attach properly, or it may be slightly to small for thr male and female to be in at the same time and they dislodge some of the eggs. there are theories that the male knows when some eggs are infertile and boots them to stop any risk to the good eggs.

Thanks Jim, I do have a breeding net, so will try this cause he ha snow kicked more out this morning since I first posted.

I do think though the theory of kicking out not fertile eggs could be true cause looking at the eggs that he has kicked out, some are full and opaque looking and most are completely see through and it's obvious there is nothing inside.

Should the air stone just be gentle? Just enough to move fresh water over them or quite hard so it's enough to really move them around?

This male is pretty special to me cause I saved him from certain death about 3 or 4 months ago.
I had him in my turtle tank along with some other catfish type sucker fish and I found him with his entire tail and a bit of his actual body where the tail joins the body missing.
I gather the turtle has got hold of him and chewed it all off.

So this is when I put him in the Cherry Shrimp tank and his it all healed very slowly and his tail has grown back some what. It is about half the length it normally is and it grew straight up instead of sort of flat out (if that makes sense:) so he beat the odds and now he's a dad, which I thought would not happen cause I wasn't sure if his reproductive bits were bitten off (cause I don't know exactly where they are but I know they are down that way) but obviously not, obviously they are still usable and can do the job.

She has laid on the side of the driftwood, just where it meets the substrate sort of thing. He did actually build what you could call a cave just beside this area, he just kept pushing and pushing all the substrate away until it made a hole under the driftwood but she didn't lay in there for some reason. I think it wasn't big enough for the 2 of them, that's why she laid just outside of it.
What is interesting now is, after she laid, the hole somehow got filled back in a far bit but now when he leaves his eggs, he is going into that bit again and digging it out again and has just since last night, made his cave again.
Would I do damage if (after these eggs have hatched and after he has kicked them away and they are on their own) if I was to help him a bit and dig some more of the substrate out for him and make it deeper and bigger?
Would he get upset if I was to interfere with his cave making?

Because I never planned on breeding them, I didn't have any caves in there as such but I have now added some, hoping next time they will use one of them.

I've always used a gentle flow, basically your recreating the fanning motion used by the male that keeps the eggs clean and oxygenated.

I' would just leave the male to create his own cave, unless he starts to unstabalize the piece of driftwood, but now you have added some hopefuly he will start using one of them.

Good luck with the eggs

Hi congrats on the spawn.

I noticed you said you were going to used a net trap fry saver for the eggs. PLEASE DONT

I have made this mistake before and not sure if others have but the bn babies get their fins stuck and tangle in the netting. I lost a whole spawn from this wwhen i first started out and it is gutting to see loads of trapped little babies.

I either use a plastic one with airstone or put it under the outlet of my external

hope this helps you

good luck

Well as luck would have it, when I went to get my net out, it was not there, so goodness knows where it is, so I can't use it even if I wanted to.

I did think about maybe using a stocking instead (to replace the netting) but didn't have any of them either, so I have done nothing so far.

I think I will let nature take it's course with this first spawn.

Dad has now kicked out about half of the eggs but I noticed today/tonight he has not left the clutch at all, he has finally decided to stay and fan all the time now.
Maybe he is now happy that he has got rid of unfertilized eggs or something like that and feels he can now spend the time he should on the good eggs:)

I am a bit confused about when I should see wrigglers though, I have read 4 days right through to 10 days and everything in between.

These eggs were laid sometime Sunday night/Monday morning, on average when should I expect to see some wrigglers??

Mine usually hatch after 4 days and sometimes 5, but i suppose it depends. I think i read somewhere that temp can effect the time it takes for them to hatch, but im not 100% on that.

danp99 is quite correct I should have stated to use one of the rigid ones and not the net type

The eggs will normally hatch in 4-5 days but it could be upto another two weeks untill the male lets them out, it all depends on individual males.

So I should see some wrigglers maybe tomorrow then, that great:)

There's no sign of any today as yet but I can definitely see which eggs have been fertilised.

Can I also ask, is it normal for the mum to come along and eat the eggs that have been knocked out?

My hubby and I were sitting looking at the tank this morning and I noticed another small clump of eggs that he had knocked out (maybe around 10 eggs), I was telling hubby how I can't use the net etc etc to save them but I might try a stocking etc etc and all of a sudden the mum swims from the end of the tank straight over to the eggs and puts her mouth straight over them and starts sucking.
I was in shock and I couldn't believe my eyes and I said to hubby "surely she knows they are her eggs and she is not going to eat them? How on earth did she know to swim from all the way over there straight onto the eggs?"....then right before our eyes, she munched them down and they were all gone!!!!

I have not read anywhere in all the info I have read that she would/could do this and it shocked me but it might explain that when I went to find all the other eggs he had kicked out, they were no where to be found.....cause she had obviously eaten them!!!

Does this happen often???

Dad has not left the clutch of eggs at all since yesterday and he has not stopped fanning them at all, so it looks like he might finally be taking good care of them?

Thanks so much guys for all your help, I really appreciate it as a newbie to all this. I have been doing so much reading it's not funny.

Mums maternal instincts normally finish once she has laid the eggs.

After they have hatched it will be another 3-4 days before they use up their eggs sacs, at first they look like an egg with a tail but they grow quickly and will always need to have food available.

It's 4am here in Australia (in Brisbane where I am) and last night at 9pm just before I went to bed, I checked on my up ciming babies to find ONE wriggler.

Woohoo!!!! It is soooooo cute :heart:

Dad decided late arvo to not sit on the eggs and fan anymore and went about an inch away into into re-made cave and just sit at the edge and fan (maybe he was fanning the eggs from afar).
When I noticed the wriggler (am hoping to find some more shortly when I go and check) he was wriggling away from the other eggs and was way up the driftwood about 1/2 ft away from dad in the opposite direction and dad didn't seem to notice.

So I don't know if he will keep them under his care or not or if he is just not up to all this fatherhood stuff yet cause it's his first lot of eggs.

From what I have read though, out of the ones that do hatch ok, I have hope that they will survive and I will make sure they have correct food etc.

Another thing I noticed and I was hoping someone could explain it cause again, I can't seem to find any info is....

When I did my checks during the day, out of the clutch of eggs that are left (maybe half of original clutch size), earlier they were pretty much all a opaque yellow colour and I could see where I think the tail was and maybe even some eyes but amongst this was the few odd empty eggs that were totally see through and just looked like a shell.
But when I did my before bed check, there was a patch of eggs that had gone from being the opaque yellow to being see through empty eggs, it was all on one side of the clutch and did not look like this earlier.
So how has this happened?
Is it that when they hatch, they do actually leave a empty looking full egg shell behind or something else?
I just don't understand how they can change like this unless it's just the shell left behind and I have more wrigglers running around somewhere that I can't see.

I scared my hubby last night when I found my first wriggler....I was so excited to see it that I yelled out to him to hurry up and come see and he said I scared the daylights out of him.
I'm so stoked watching all this unfold before my eyes, I just love nature like this:)

You are correct with the empty looking shell. some of mine leave these behind and they just vanish? not sure if they dissolve or are eaten but they are there just after the babies hatch

Congratulations

By the sound of it there will be more, going on the description of the cave most will escape dads attention quite early. In a cave where he can nearly block the only exit he will be able to keep them in a lot longer.