Unusual beahviour in A.eremnopyge

[ed seeley]

Hi guys,
Just been upstairs to do a water change on my A.eremnopyge tank and spotted that the female is showing brooding colours again. I looked down into the area around her cave and saw a bunch of wrigglers on the sand. On a closer look I then saw some larger fry that must be from a previous brood. I thought she had lost this earlier brood after I saw her chasing and seemingly eating what I thought was the last one a week ago. Obviously she didn't eat it! Or could it just be that the earlier brood had dispersed away and she lost her brooding care, then started another brood and now that she has some more babies, she's feeling all maternal again and has started looking after the older babies too? There are also a few older babies from her first spawn in this tank in there that I can't remove as it's pretty densely planted.

Has anyone seen similar behaviour before? Do you think that the two broods will be ok together? I estimate the elder brood are about 4 weeks old, maybe 5.

I'll try and get some pictures if I have the digital camera around here.

 

[Mike Wise]

This isn't all that uncommon with highly maternal females. If she allows the fry of different ages to mingle together, you are more likely to lose many of the younger fry to their older siblings until the younger fry grow too large to eat.