# urgent dither suggestion for P. taeniatus "Moliwe" ?



## kribs (Oct 31, 2011)

Hi all,

My pair spawned 2 days ago and until today everything was fine. The male keeps attacking the female when he sees her wandering outside the cave. Her tail fin was slightly thorn and male was quite furious, and the weird thing is the female kept moving out of the nest despite the male attacking her continuously. She did not abandon the eggs, goes back every 10 seconds, turns upside down to fan them, etc, but simply likes to hang outside between eggs care. I fed her by putting some food in front of the nest, so I guess hunger is not the reason she moves so much. I moved the male to another tank for now. They both seem ok.

The tank is 75 cm long and 90 liters, I suspect the problem is a lack of dither fish. Any ideas on that? And any suggestions on dither fish for the next spawn? I hate to separate pairs, the fun part of this genus is their extraordinary parental care, and I would like to see that.

I am breeding some P. annulatus, anybody has experience with them as dithers? I am worried that they will be killed by the pair.


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## slimbolen99 (Apr 28, 2006)

If you supply some floating plants, the clown killies should work ok. They are quick enough. Anything with an upward pointing mouth will work great; not a lot of options as far as biotopes are concerned, but pencilfish from South America would work well too. Good luck.


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## kribs (Oct 31, 2011)

Thanks for the reply. With the rather poor selection of fish we have around here I can not not even dream about a true biotope anyway. I will give the clown killies a try try next time.

It would be a shame if they manage to kill any though, the fry of this species is a pain to grow!


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## slimbolen99 (Apr 28, 2006)

No doubt about that. When I was breeding them I would start out with about 20 tiny tiny babies in a 10 gallon and was lucky to get four or five out of each spawn. And I had five 10 gallons devoted to them! I don't think I was getting ample small foods to them.


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## kribs (Oct 31, 2011)

Those babies are the smallest I have seen in the hobby. The thing is they don't die on me but just too long to grow to a decent size. I have plenty of green water (not the pure algea stuff, but more like a mix of infusoria and algae soup ) for my daphnia cultures, so that helps.

Back to the P. taeniatus pair, one day after separating the couple, they both stopped eating ( not even live food ). Then each day I saw some eggs in front of the cave, just spat out. Now there are like 30 wriggles in the cave, just a fraction of the eggs originally laid. It's kinda sad to see all the dead eggs.

Anyway today I felt to urge to reunite the pair, as they both were refusing to eat. It's been 1 hour and things seem ok. I also added some clown killies. Fingers crossed, waiting.

Any suggestions? Is it common that the female gets stressed out when you remove the male?


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