The remaining female has settled in and though she had no interest in living squirming fat juicy blackworms, she immediately accepted frozen bloodworms. I read on the killitalk list that fishes fed more nutritious food live shorter lives, so I may have to find a way to feed this gal less till her mate is ready or whatnot. Struck me as odd. For some reason, the dominate male was found in a curved position dead today. That leaves me at one pair, losing the two bigger fish. I decided to(after reading a few posts on killitalk) turn on the light and add a few dithers-a pair of Heterandria formosa and a small swordtail juvie. That helped quite a bit, and the female is out in the open most of the time now and is quite bold. She probably views the dithers as either really large food item(the male Heterandria, which he seems quite curious about) or otherwise other females, as she puffs her gills and challenges them. The female Het responds with her own display but it appears the notho female can't read it. The other male i'm still unsure of what he is doing back there I see him on the occasion but he never ventures out in the open. I hope he collects himself and becomes like the female sooner or later.
Yes the bottom has sand, but it is not deep(maybe 1/2 an inch in deepest spots) and MTS snails are moving through it. Will the MTS get into the peat and try to eat eggs?
Just curious, but have there been any documentations of hybrids between SAA and nothos? Most killikeepers rotate norelated fish through the tanks(instead of raising one kind of notho, clearing them out and then adding a diff species).
Hope to get the box back soon. Won't it be getting cold to ship unless with a heatpack(and even then a bit risky?)
Reading through the list it sounds like everyone has the problem of too many males. Is this your experience? I would think having females outnumber males by about 2-1 would be nice-then you could offer trios or 5 fish.
Btw, if I provide the peat, will the nothos prefer to spawn in that?