David M
New member
Some things you just can't resist 
Imagine this, you are walking through a lfs killing time waiting to get the owners attention. His eyes are glazed over with dollar signs as he grabs armfulls of gear off the shelves, he's got a live one. A total noob buying a complete 24G set up from the ground up. You just know it's gonna be a while 
From 20 feet away you spy a GWE in a small barren acrylic cube, no, wait, there are TWO in there ! The cube is barely 12 X 12. You move closer, one is maybe 18" and a beautiful bright green, the other about 14" and a dull brown that is almost black. That just has to a pair you think. Now, say you get all the way up to the tank and notice that the dark one (female") is completely wrapped around A 2-1/2" EGGBALL !!!!!!!!!!! You can see eyes and in fact you can see the developing larvae moving inside the eggs.
Now I need another fish like I need a hole in the head but how do you walk away from that
Imagine this, you are walking through a lfs killing time waiting to get the owners attention. His eyes are glazed over with dollar signs as he grabs armfulls of gear off the shelves, he's got a live one. A total noob buying a complete 24G set up from the ground up. You just know it's gonna be a while From 20 feet away you spy a GWE in a small barren acrylic cube, no, wait, there are TWO in there ! The cube is barely 12 X 12. You move closer, one is maybe 18" and a beautiful bright green, the other about 14" and a dull brown that is almost black. That just has to a pair you think. Now, say you get all the way up to the tank and notice that the dark one (female") is completely wrapped around A 2-1/2" EGGBALL !!!!!!!!!!! You can see eyes and in fact you can see the developing larvae moving inside the eggs.
Now I need another fish like I need a hole in the head but how do you walk away from that
They started hatching this morning, just a few at first. By noon there were maybe 10-12 that had broken free from the egg mass and were wriggling like mad trying to shed the "gel" of the egg. Then they vanished, I could not find them anywhere. This went on all day, I'd see a few isolated floating eggs with wriggling larvae trying to break free. Then nothing. By late afternoon I figured they had to be back in the eggball, and sure enough that is where they were. What happens is they take almost an hour to get free of the egg and shed the yolk/ gel, then they make haste to the nearset possible substrate. IOW these are NOT pelagic larve, in fact it's hard to call them "larvae" at all. They are definately bethnic, as soon as they can possibly wriggle free of the egg, they dive right back into the egg mass or whatever substrate is available. I lowered the kriesel so the free larvae could escape. They gatherd around the airline or held tight to the corners. I added some knotted up tubing and they immediately took up residence. At 2 hours after lights out there were hundreds of them but not swarming like c-fish, they are mostly gathered in the knotted tube, the airline to the kriesel and the corners of the tank. I had added some rotifers this morning, I have already seen them feeding on them even though I think they are certainly large enough to take nhbbs. I added bbs tonight and they took them. They are about 5/8 -3/4", about the same size and shape as a post met fridmani. Again, they are less than 12 hours old !!!!!
