Ok, drained the entire system, washed everything, and put new tank water into the system. When I went to collect the eggs, there were a lot more than I thought, maybe 500+. It’s the biggest egg clutch I’ve seen so far so looks like the male and female are becoming better at breeding.
I started to collect the eggs with rigid airline tubing attached to flexible airline tubing which siphoned into a deli container (just a scraping the tank walls to get the eggs). Every time before I collected eggs, the male which was tending to them would bolt and stay away until I collected the eggs, then he would come back in and tend to the rest of the leftover eggs. This time, dad was angry apparently. As I collected the eggs, the damsel seemed to freak out at first and dash around, but after 10 seconds, he came back in head butting and biting the rigid tubing. With how brave the fish was being, I elected to only collect around 50-80 of the eggs and left the rest behind for him to tend to . The fry will get killed or eaten in my living room tank, but, at least it keeps the male tending to the eggs for a while.
took a pic of the eggs I harvested. A group of them below:
also took a zoomed in image. The eggs definitely look fertilized as the cells within the egg have split:
Based on what I saw, I think they did in fact lay the eggs today. Either way, will wait until it gets closer to hatching before I start feeding the rotifers.
I started to collect the eggs with rigid airline tubing attached to flexible airline tubing which siphoned into a deli container (just a scraping the tank walls to get the eggs). Every time before I collected eggs, the male which was tending to them would bolt and stay away until I collected the eggs, then he would come back in and tend to the rest of the leftover eggs. This time, dad was angry apparently. As I collected the eggs, the damsel seemed to freak out at first and dash around, but after 10 seconds, he came back in head butting and biting the rigid tubing. With how brave the fish was being, I elected to only collect around 50-80 of the eggs and left the rest behind for him to tend to . The fry will get killed or eaten in my living room tank, but, at least it keeps the male tending to the eggs for a while.
took a pic of the eggs I harvested. A group of them below:
also took a zoomed in image. The eggs definitely look fertilized as the cells within the egg have split:
Based on what I saw, I think they did in fact lay the eggs today. Either way, will wait until it gets closer to hatching before I start feeding the rotifers.