Red Top Zebra holding

[dexternights]

For last couple of days my red top Zebra 2.5 inches (Who I thought was a male till recently) was being chased by the dominant Red Zebra (4 inches). Red Zebra is usually calm and doesn't bother others , other than chasing away from his Cave.

The last two days he has been chasing the Red Top Zebra all over the tank and red top zebra had to hide under behind filter outlet or circulation pump, the tank has lots of caves more than 10 and Red Top Zebra is pretty high pecking order. Seeing the constant chasing, I decided to move the Red Top Zebra to a 29 Gallon with a small peacock and to my surprise I found Red top is full of eggs in her mouth.

So now to the question?, would the eggs be fertilized already? The Red Zebra chasing didnt look like a mating behavior or maybe Im wrong. Should I put her back in main tank, Is it the Red Zebra chasing her because she is holding or is it rough mating?..

[SabrinaD]

First do you have any males red top zebras? They are not the same species as the Red zebra, however that doesn't mean that they can't mate. It is likely that the breeding happened at a point you were unaware of and the resultant chasing is the male trying to continue the breeding that she was, obviously, uninterested in. My suggestion would be to strip her right now of the eggs IF you don't have another red top zebra who could be the father of the clutch. The offspring will be hybirds that you shouldn't distribute to others and which you can quickly run out of space to house. This is a nice time to do it since they aren't "baby" fish yet and you aren't faced with the prospect of killing fish.