male alf bn always trying to breed is this safe?

[foti]

i have a question regarding my male this will be his third straght batch is this healthy im worried he has 2 females of breeding size and verious sized fry all i ever see him doing is fan in his cave !

i drop in food bam his on it eatting fast then straght back in his cave 'food only close to cave!'

so im worried is this wearing him out or is he in his prime

should i split him from females for a week or 2

last week i took his cave out emptied all fry out about 40 no eggs but he was in there fanning 'light' i was wondering why so few there are another 30 or so that are areound the tank and im sure i lost afew from when i changed there tank from a tub to a 2.5x 2x 2 no substrate about 2 weeks before that .

anyways do they need rest ? i can tell that he wants to breed with his colour stronge and the way his hanging in his cave what should be the right thing for him

i know that this is a good thing but i dont need to stress him i guess im thinking that its greedy and wrong !

p.s i have some fry :yes:

 

[MIX02u]

Sounds like he is well happy but remember he is acting on instinct. In the wild they produce as many offspring as they can to ensure their genes survive. In the aquarium its a little different. Make sure you rest him for two or three weeks so he can condition himself again. Its great he is feeding but to keep him in tip top shape he needs some time to himself.
Also make sure you keep fry in a fry saver as the bacteria that builds up on the glass in a bare bottom tank can kill them pretty quickly.

HTH

Cheers
Mic

 

[foti]

i have always moved the fry just some are left over with each WC i catch more which i put in to there own tank but that is also bare bottom iv heard that this is a conflicting argument most say that it is the cause of deaths and others say it is not proven i think bn are tuff in that sense and or iv been lucky with all the others

as for male il rest him but how move him stop doing WC ? remove caves ?
cave sounds to be the best bet but i dont want that to stress him out i bet he will end up fighting with the rest of the bn in there !

how should i tackle it ?
and as for bare bottom ? i dont want to add substrate it is so much easyer to clean now the fry dont stop pooing .

 

[Doodles]

Have you no other tanks?
As MIX02u says he does need to be rested, all the time he is looking after eggs, he isnt eating.
As for the bare bottom tank, make sure you keep the glass very clean, syphoning out the debris isn't enough to prevent bacteria build up.

 

[Bigjohnnofish]

male

my opnion is to let him go for it non-stop.... they do tend to rest themselves after about 7-10 spawns in a row...
if he loses a lot of size and becomes skinny i would just replace him with another male... as albino l/f's are cheap as chips....
changes your blood line slightly as well...
i tend to keep all the females and just rotate males from time to time...

same goes for plecos too but unfortunately we cant always afford to keep spare males for each species....

 

[Brengun]

I agree, just let him do his own thing.
My L397 just gave themselves a month off breeding.
I put some new wood to chew in the tank and everyone forgot about breeding for a month and got stuck into the new treat. Maybe you could try something like that?