N. caudo Parenting Prob.!!!!

[Xxzsdrklakdfj]

hey, my fm caudo has shown the standard breeding behaviors (acting abnormally strange towards the male, and then the obvios tip theirs eggs, diving into the shell halfway then frantically fanning her entire body at the entrance :lol: (this was the dead giveaway :lol: )) So as i fed my fish this afternoon i sat down infront of the caudo tank and noticed a ton of fry swimming all over the fm's conk shell :D This is my first time breeding this pair, and the reason i need some advice is because i bought this pair from a hobbyiest on this forum as a breeding pair, but i was told that they had the tendancy to eat fry once they left the pairs territory and tried to return. I but the pair in a 20lng which is divided in half by a watertight acrylic sheet divider which i made so that fry couldn't slip by. I was hoping that having the cuados in half a 20lng would be small enough that the fry couldn't leave what the parents didn't take as their territory therefore they wouldn't get eaten since they couldn't return if they couldn't leave, lol good logic huh :wink: :lol: Well now that i'm seeing all these fry in this shell i really would rather not risk it, and it WOULD be so easy to remove the whole shell w/ the fry, BUT everyone knows things are never as easy as they should be :lol: The fm refuses to leave the shell so she would have to go along for the ride, but what i'm thinking is if they would eat the fry when they left their territory then what would happen if i moved all the fry w/ the fm to a strange territory (10gal) don't want to risk her seeing it as they left the territory and just eating all of them. SO just curious if anybody else has some problems like this and if so what do u think the best solution would be :-? :-? :-? Well any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,
-matt

[Boilermaker]

I would leave them be Matt, it may take them a few spawns to get it down but eventually they should.
I have some tangs that just bred also and were doing really well raising the fry and now chaos, but this is their first batch and it usually takes a few do get it right.

Good luck!

[Xxzsdrklakdfj]

*****UPDATE*****
Well got home from school today and the fry were everywhere so it really wasn't all that hard to syphon a few off at a time, then wait 5min. for them to come back out and get a couple more. I did this until i got 13 fry into a 10gal. by themselves. It's only a quater filled up right now but it's all water from their old tank. I'm gonna take a little more and hopefully get it to half way tonight all old water, then i'm gonna just either VERY slowly add new water or fill the old tank up rest of the ways like as if i did a water change and just get the other half either tom. or the day after. These fry are tiny so i'm sure even the slightest water param. change wouldn't be the best idea for them. But i plan on leaving the rest of the fry in w/ the parents to see how things turn out w/ them, and if they get eaten, then i'll know to move all of them next time, BUT i'll still have enough fry in the 10gal to get my money back from when i bought the pair. Hopefully things will be ok though and i'll be able to just leave the fry w/ them until they are about 1/4in like i do all the other fry. So this batch is just going to have to be the test subjects for future caudo. fry :/ just hope it works out.

-matt

BTW
Boilermaker
The thing that worried me was this WASN"T their first time breeding, first time breeding for ME but not the first time. The person i bought the breeding pair from got them to breed 2x and both times the parents ended up starting to eat the fry when they left and returned to the parents territory. And then he got them to breed a 3rd time 2 days before he shipped them to me. So since this was their 4th time breeding and the 1st and 2nd spawn resulted in them eating the fry and it is unknown whether they would have the 3rd time since they were shipped and the fry were left on their own. Let me know what u think of the above statement about how i handled it. I'd appreciate the feedback.

Thanks
-matt