Our paradise fish the dad of all dad's and surrogate to boot!

This morning myself and my wife woke up to a brand new brood of 70 little paradise fish fry that hatched during the night. Dad is not eating and frantically tending the nest. We have divided the tank in two and about ten minutes ago the pair of dwarf gourami's embraced and some of the eggs floated through the circulation holes in the divider. The daddy paradise fish saw the floating eggs and immediately scooped them up and promptly placed them in his own nest! Now I guess it remains to be seen if he will raise the fry as his own as soon as they hatch.

 

Congrats Shrimp lover!:love:

 

Nice ...

 

Thanks guys. Yesterday evening I decided to take out the fry as they were now free swimming and I did not want to let my male wane away as I thought that he would not eat. In the meantime though the eggs from the Gouramis have hatched ( if you never had them then let me tell you that they are REALLY VERY VERY SMALL ) you can almost not see them with the naked eye. At any rate as soon as I have finished feeding the male paradise fish some of the fry started drifting into his side of the tank. Bear in mind that all of his bubble nest has dissipated at this stage. He immediately saw the very small fish and picked it up and blew a bubble since yesterday evening he has blown a carpet of bubbles and seems to be looking after the Gourami fry as if they are his own. Guess the male gourami now have a helper to raise his fry. The 3 day old fry is also doing very well we caught in excess of a hundred and they are now in a separate grow out tank eating algea from leave clippings that I saved and intentionally had some algea grow on.

 

Just a little update. We just took the gourami fry out of the tank with the paradise fish and Gourami male. I stopped counting when I reached 100 so now I am hoping to have a fair number of them grow hopefully they will do a bit better than the first clutch of paradise fishes. For the moment however I am really very happy and looking forward to seeing them grow. I have also started to mix up some green water hoping to get some rotifier out of it. All of the fish is now resting and they will go back into their orginal tanks during next week.

 

Congrats on the double succes Shrimp lover, never heard of artificial brood surrogates in fish before.
But you should really try and post some pics of the fry even if the photos are terrible.

Btw I've never owned or even seen a real live paradise fish before, but on a lot of forums they always talk of how aggresive they are.
Is this true or do you reckon they can be kept in a community tank?

 

Congrats! Always great when fish display natural instincts.

 

I have tried keeping the in a community setup G and one of my males get along famously with all of the other fishes the other one however is a totally different story all together the females see to do alright however. Two males together is a total no-no and they do not get along with any gourami males or beta males they imply chew straight through them regardless of the size of the other fish. It seems however that those fish that grew up together is not in the least bit agro towards each other guess it depends on the individuals.