Looking for advice breeding Neo Signatus

[Wantsome]

I've been in the hobby 20 years but I never really dedicated myself to breeding anything. I did have Neo Brichardi breed for me without trying.

Anyway I have a pair of Neo Signatus in a 20 gallon. I'm using sand for a substrate and I added a bunch of shells about 8 of them. Some of the shells are turbo snails and a couple apple snail shells.

The male and female don't seem to be getting along at the moment. She sits in the upper corner of the tank while the male wonders around the bottom. I'm wondering about compatibility issues or maybe she don't like the shells?

Will they ever pair up or is this a lost cause?

I was thinking about changing their diet to try an fatten her up. Right now I'm just feeding brine shrimp flake food. I was thinking about trying frozen foods.

Any suggestions to increase my chance of success?

[jcunningham0295]

Signatus are a tough one.  I would start feeding frozen brine shrimp for sure. The male will be rough on the female from my experience with them.  I had them breed in a bare bottom 20 high with some shells and then a move them to a 20 long with substrate, no spawns during this time.  Finally moved them to a 20 long with no substrate and then they spawned not too long after.  Never figured out why.

[Wantsome]

OK thanks for the reply. I'll switch to frozen I'm also going to try and find some more shells. One thing I forgot to mention most of the shells I have came from a hermit crab tank at a local fish store and they smelled really bad. I tried boiling them but maybe there's a smell still left that I couldn't detect.

[jcunningham0295]

I would make sure there is at least 15 shells in the tank for the two of them.  You can get shells pretty cheap of ebay.  I use most of the ones below.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Escargot-Shells-Large-Empty-24-pcs/222713498074?hash=item33dac249da:g:r1gAAOSwoVNaBQm7

[Wantsome]

Well it's been a couple of months and today I noticed some fry. They're very tiny like little dots darting around the bottom. I'm worried about the parents eating them. There's plenty of hiding spots with plants and stuff. But I don't know how the parents will treat the fry as they grow.

Should I remove the fry or just leave them in the tank?

[E.Y.]

Congratulations on the fry!

[Wantsome]

Congratulations on the fry!

Thanks now I just have to figure out how to take care of the fry.

[E.Y.]

Exactly...  just have to keep them out of Pop's digestive track.

[danotaylor]

In my experience neolamp's will raise and tolerate the presence of multiple generations of offspring simultaneously. Keep the adults well fed to eliminate predation upon their fry. It is amazing to watch numbers multiply in a neolamp group. Like Josh said, keep plenty of shells for the group to spread out into. Love to see a short vid or pics if you can post them 👍

[jcunningham0295]

My parents sucked and would eat the fry to keep an eye on them.  I ended up moving the pair to another tank a few times when they spawned to prevent this.  Not all lamps are good parents that is for sure.

[Wantsome]

Just an update for anyone interested. Last week I saw some fry in the tank but the parents ate them before I could get to them. The batch of fry before that I was able to get out 3 before the parents ate them. The fry are so hard to see. They look like little specs of sand moving around. They blend in with the substrate. The only way I was able to get fry was to siphon the substrate into a bucket then dump the bucket into another tank. I can't see them to catch them with a net.