Video of (attempted) spawning

Mike, your video does not show a pair of spec. Sentang spawning but it’ a video of an attempted spawning. Mostly the first embraces in a cave happen for hours without eggs appearing, especially in young pairs, but with older ones, too. This is quite normal and is called apparent pairings or sham pairings (German “Scheinpaarungen”). Every sequence of pairíngs is introduced by such sham pairing attempts, but after some time the eggs appear and the male will fertilize them. Therefore, your video is a video of a sequence of normal sham spawnings.

However, in your case subsequently there might have been no real spawnings at all. There could be two causes: firstly, the pair has no really quiet place, it’s too much disturbance around them (take the shrimps!). Secondly, there is a second male around. This is quite a bad thing for normal spawing behaviour because that is disturbed or prevented by necessary antagonistic behaviour of the two males. Therefore I think you will not be successful with this tank resp. its living community. In tanks that are really crowded by plants it might be different, but the best method is to isolate the pair in a small spawning tank without any disturbance. In nature there is disturbance, too, but with much more space, and that minimizes the disturbance.

I think Mike, that you will be rewarded if you do find a nice quiet tank for your pair, – and you have a really good camera I think, so if you set things up carefully and plan a little you can get really good videoes without disturbing too much. I have also found my camera back again, and enjoy making videoes. Actually I would really like to show you my last video of today (and hope you dont think it bad of me to use your thread 🙂 … and here you can see a pair of linkei’s also maybe like Peter is describing ‘trying’. However they have spawned – as you can see – already a few days ago, – but it seemed like today, they tried for long long time, and it really didnt look as if they knew how excatly they should do.

But if you have a couple – that likes each other – in a smaller tank, and set the cave a little to the back, but not too much, have it so you can see inside the cave, – the one I use seemed to be perfect for photographing, although maybe not so perfect as the roof is a bit not even, which means that eggs might slide up, not a good thing, – however they obviously did not.

Of course you have to make sure you do not disturb the fishes or scare them, they wont feel comfortable enough then, – but you can make them used to the camera by having it standing on something stable in front, – I dont know what its called in english, but I have a ‘foot’- thing for my camera, so it stands there all day in front of the tank, and then all I have to do is push the on button. So theres not much movement in front of the tank. It also gives better images if the camera is not hold by hand, but is standing on something firm. Light is a problem, I acutally glued a small pocket lamp onto the camera 🙂 … and pointed it into the cave, – not a very strong light, that might disturb them, but enough to make video.

I am trying to follow this pair and the eggs until the larvaes have gone from the cave.
Here it is … actually I cut it down to at least half the time, they spend so long in and out, trying, leaving, trying again 🙂 ..
They did succeed in the end, – there are some interesting views towards the end, for those who have the patience to watch that long .. 🙂

[video]http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4NCykvgkks&feature=player_detailpage[/video]

Helene, this is a great video. The Parosphromenus cf. linkei are looking very good. Do you have some pairs you don’t need? 😛 My english isn’t very good. Sorry for that ^^

Marius

I’m very interested in this species. Maybe we can find a way to send them to Berlin ^^ Perhaps i can come next year to Hamburg, but thats not sure. Anyway I must wait till the fry is growing up.

Thank you Helene for your advice! In cooperation with Peter Finke and Horst Linke I get a group of Parosphromenus cf. linkei! They are very beautiful 🙂 I hope, I can see in the next week the first egg/fry ^^

Marius

Helene,

What a fantastic photo and a beautiful fish. Well done.