Keeping nijsseni fry in the main tank.

[Jesper69]

In spring last year I started up a new (200 L) tank, with one male and two female A. nijsseni (wild). At the end of Oct. (ca. 3 month ago) one of the females presents a small group of fry, from which 5 have survived until now. My question is: Can I keep them in the main tank until they can be sexed and sold? – Some weeks ago the female nijsseni changed from defending the fry to starting hunting them away. But the fry are all doing fine (my tank got a lot of possibilities for the fry to hide).

 

[DanielG]

I would personally move them to another tank so you can track their progress and watch them grow. Even though you have a lot of hiding spaces in the main display tank, you may notice that they stop appearing or all together just disappear. Moving them to another tank would remove doubt that they possibly have all been eaten.

You probably don't want to spend all of your free time making sure the parents don't eat the babies.

 

[Jesper69]

As the "babies" already have a size of 2 cm, I don't think they will be eaten. The female took good care of them a quite long time (probably why she didn't start laying new eags).
If nobody else got some other bad experiences about keeping them in the main tank until they can be sexed, I think I'll keep them there, as long as non of the fishes show signs of being stressed.
Anyway, thank you Daniel. - The next time I'll move the baby fry to an other tank earlier, as I can't expekt to have the same luck every time.

 

[Mike Wise]

Although the parents might not eat them, they certainly seem to want them to go away. Often this means attack that kill them or stress them so much that they succumb to diseases. I'd remove them.

 

[Jesper69]

Thank you!! Daniel and Mike.
I'll remove them to a smaller tank as soon as possible.