Panduro female always yellow

[apisto_shores]

Hey guys and gals,

I have a 125 gal tank that is densely planted. The other tank inhabitants
are 5 cacatuoides (2m/3f), 1 Borelli, 6 cardinal tetras,5 sae's, 19 amano
shrimps and a pair of panduro's. The ph ranges between 6.8-7.0, kh 0-2.
I use only r/o water that runs thru peet. My question is my female
panduro is most of the time yellow but only rarely guards a coconut shell.
And I never see fry, its been like this for about 3 months. Oh yeah, the
temp is at 79-80 deg. And of course with my luck I have never seen
the cacatuoides females never turn yellow. There are 4 coconut shells
and 2 clay pots. Does anybody have any answers to this.

 

[LyreTail]

I can only say with my limited experience over the past several years that I have had several females turn yellow and show aggressive guarding behavior including a double red agassizii pair. I have spied pink / red eggs several times, but nothing hatched. Finally a little over a month ago after redecorating my tank ( 3 months ago) with multiple cave structures and letting java moss grow out of control, I was surprised with a very very large hatch out of "Papagei" and it looks like most if not all are surviving. This final time, the female layed her eggs in my inverted cave pots and dug out gravel very similar to what Kribs do. Before that she was laying eggs on branches and rocks out in the open. I am not sure if the caves played a part in the survival of the fry, but I am unlikely to change from them now. I should also say that when I got my Apistos they were all small, so it may have been necessary to grow them up some more.
I removed the LongFin Serpae tetras in this tank but not the 6 zebra plecos
http://groups.msn.com/LyreTailsAquarium/makingcustomcaves.msnw