! MY FIRST NAGYI-FRY !
Last Saturday, I was fastening the film canisters (that used to float around) to the walls of my Paro and Betta tanks.
Coming to the tank with my dominant P. nagyi couple, where I hadn’t seen the male for quite some time, I checked the two canisters with the entrance in the direction of the front pane – and found them empty. But there’s a third canister floating directly against the front pane and not showing his entrance. So I carefully moved this canister away from the pane and slowly turned to have a look inside. And what shall I say: There’s the long time not seen male guarding some 15 to 20 already hatched fry not even leaving it’s cave due to this disturbancess… – Slowly, I moved the canister back into it’s old position and left the tank alone until yesterday evening.
UPDATE February 28
Four days after finding the hatched fry, I thought about re-checking the canister. So I again slowly turned it by 180 degree – and found the male still in the cave. This time I could only observe about five larvae – but the nest was much larger than before!
[i]Do Paro males still rebuild and strengthen a nest after the fry has hatched?
Or do Paros couple in such short intervals that fresh eggs are placed in a cave where still some larvae are in?[/i]
However, this time (after I accidentaly had destroyed their first cluth some weks ago) the fry has hatched – and is about to leave the cave. – Now I wonder, whether I should remove first the female and – after it left the canister – the male, too, in order to give both a rest and to make sure that they don’t go for their fry.
On the other hand, I would like to give it a try and to bring up the fry without removing the adults. For my B. tussyae this approach works rather excellent with the adults not a bit interested in their free-swimming offspring. But what about Paros? Should better I eliminate the risk? What do you out there think and what’s your advice here?