Will a female steal another females fry?

[Tattooedfool83]

I have a harem of double red cacatoudies, recently i had added 2 new females to the initial pair i had. The pair has had many many successful spawns but the male always ate the fry. So recently ive been pulling the fry and growing them out in marina hang on breeder boxes. SO earlier this week one of the new females brought out her wigglers, i pulled almost all of them which left less then 10 for her. The older female had laid eggs and was in her cave with them. Today i peak in the tank and the smaller female has like a 100 fry and the older female is off to one side of the tank looking sad. The only thing i can come up with is that the smaller newer female that already had a few fry stole hers. Is this even possible?

 

[regani]

I have seen this with the borellii I keep. The two females in the tank always seem to synchronise their spawning and over time one female ends up with all the fry

 

[Tattooedfool83]

It's just funny. The newest female is a third the size of the other. And stole her fry

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

and over time one female ends up with all the fry

Usually happened to me too. At one point I had a 1:7 male:female A. cacatuoides harem, and one female used to end up with a huge fry cloud, although often the other females would diligently look after their few remaining fry, and could over time acquire fry back from the dominant female (although presumably mainly fry that they weren't genetically related too).

I keep very weedy, 3D complex tanks which may have made it easier for the fry to pass from one female to another.

I think in a tank with a mainly sandy bottom area the dominant female would have been able to keep "her" fry closer to her (they pick up stragglers and spit them back into the main fry aggregation).

cheers Darrel

 

[Tattooedfool83]

My double red tank

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

My double red tank

Perfect Apisto tank. Mine always start like this, but over time I fill the bottom up with spare caves, moss, plants, wood, leaves etc.

cheers Darrel

 

[Tattooedfool83]

There is two pots on each side of the tank and I do wanna add some leaves to the bottom. I'd like to do oak leaves just need to find some. There is just floating water lettuce, crypts and Anubias and java fern in there.