WOW I thought I updated this when I set up the fish room and moved everything over apparently I did not.
Anyways here is the update I took the slightly smaller male I purchased and put him in the the larger female I originally started with. Back in March, in a 60g acrylic they spawned a lot every ten or so days and I never got any fry I also never pulled the eggs to attempt artificially hatch them. I kind of lost interest and just let them spawn and eat there eggs and do there own thing for a few months. I began thinking about selling these but really wanted to spawn them before I got rid of them so I began putting some effort in.
I first started by pulling the eggs after they spawned and putting them in a separate 10g, as I thought maybe the eggs were just being eaten this did not work all the eggs would turn white and fungus. I did this twice with no success, I decided maybe they were still working out the kinks they spawned a couple more times no fry. Then right about the time it started getting cold nothing, no spawning behavior, no chasing literally no interaction between the pair. I began thinking they needed a larger tank and started looking to sell again.
I contacted a couple people on here and a few on GLA who had expressed interest in the pair but I got no bites. Back to the grind stone.
Anyways after a couple months of trying a whole bunch of stuff with no results I finally got a spawn here is what I did to get not only a spawn but free swimming fry.
1. Put a few large pieces of unleached drift wood in the tank, 1 to leach tanin into the water and two to slightly lower the PH
(Blairs idea)
2. I did a large water change with cool water I didn't use a thermometer but I'd guess about 68 or so degrees, I then only filled the tank maybe 3/4 full. (Dales idea)
3. After letting the tank settle a day or so and slowly increasing temp I then cranked the heat up to about 82 degrees. I walked out of the fish room came back 10 minutes later and there were about 300 eggs. The first time this happened I left the eggs in the tank and they were gone after day 2. Basically what I attempted to do was simulate some type of a season change.
4. I repeated all the previous steps on my next water change roughly 10 days later, but this time I pulled the eggs and put them Tupperware container with an air stone floating in the tank. (very ghetto) I then added an ich medication that contained malachite green, I really should have used methyl blue but this was all kind of one a whim trying stuff out I was full expecting this to fail.
on day 3 almost all the eggs were white and fungused over. I then saw a few specks moving around in the water at first I thought they were fruit flys or just specks of dirt then with closer examination I noticed they were actually fry and there were also a bunch of wigglers still on the rock I just didn't notice. There were about 100 tiny specs I then placed in a hang on the tank fry box. There looks to be about 30 or so left they don't look great I'd be surprised if I was able to keep 10 alive.
The ultimate goal with these though is to see the parents raise the fry so that will be my next step, at least I now know two things, I do have a male and female for sure lol when it takes so long you begin to question your vents and all the signs. and two that both parents are fertile, this crossed my mind more then once along the way.
I will try to update this a bit more frequently and I promise pics when I get up and do my water changes today.
I have been working with this female since January not growing her but getting eggs laid and failed spawns so wigglers and free swimmers are a huge deal.
