My beautiful pair have spawned for the first time ...

... and are so far displaying all of the devoted parenting behaviours I've read about.

Except, Buttercup (Mum) just started shoving Westley (Dad) out of the way every time he goes near the eggs. A few minutes ago he got annoyed at her for doing it and I thought they might have a bit of actual biffo ... she just bit him right on the butt!

They've laid their eggs on the filter intake and I reached in earlier to clear some duckweed from its base, very slowly and respectfully, and she head-butted me! Bless her beautiful heart.

He is taking care of keeping the other fish away, but she seems to want to keep him away half the time now.

They're super young - only about eight months old - I have had them both since they were barely an inch across, and they bonded the first day I put them in the tank together. They've been sorting out this site of theirs for a few weeks now but I thought they were too young to actually spawn. Guess not!

Is their inexperience making her testy towards him or is it just her maternal instinct generally? Wes is a super softy but then, Buttercup used to be so timid that she literally would hide in his fins (he's a veil) so I know that obviously their behaviours change as they mature.

 

Is it young Angels?

 

Is it young Angels?

Yep - no more than eight months old

 

I have no experience with angels but with other dwarf cichlids it’s not uncommon for the female to start chasing the male . In small tanks I take pity on him . Depending on the “ value “ of the fry I even remove the male as well as all the other fish.
I believe angels will just keep pumping out eggs and fry until you have hundreds of fry, if you have the room .
Do you intend to try and raise a few juveniles?

8 months old is very normal for the fish I play around with. In fact the young make more determined parents. The size apistogramma cacs breed is well under 1/3 of the adult size. This actually makes me wonder if some of the giant adults sold in chain stores are ex - breeding stock? Know as grandad fish.

 

They take turns... and they get offended easily.
She's on watch, if he comes over to help she's gonna hit him as if to say "I got this back off". If it's his turn when she needs to rest, she'll hit him and tell him to get over there. And rolls get reversed. It's part inexperience and natural behavior, one tends the eggs, the other stands lookout and long defense and rests between nothing going on. But the one tending eggs needs to keep fanning them, and hopefully learns to pick out the white eggs that will get fungused ( they usually don't learn this for a long time.)

She may choose to tend the eggs the whole time and keep him rested to tend the wrigglers, or she might stick him on egg duty and her handle wriggler duty.

If he comes over it's like him telling her "you aren't doing it good enough, ill get it." Which is gonna make her angry and nip him a bit telling him to back off.
If they make it to freeswimmers, he'll most likely have the main cloud hanging around him, and dealing with that will be his job.

If she gets tired she'll let him take over fanning so she can take a break from it.

Male and female are equally likely to eat the eggs or fry at any point. They are usually good parents but if it starts going wrong or too much pressure of attacks they will eat them rather than let someone else eat them or let them die and go bad. It's a food resource, and try again in a couple weeks or so.

If you get to freeswimmers, both male and female will need to be removed or the fry removed at around 2 weeks or so, by then the fry will be larger and get nippy on the parents slime coat and fins, when that happens it's a matter of time before the parents have had enough and could eat them all. You'll notice the parents running from the fry cloud trying to swim around them for protection, and that's when the fry have become nippy and the parents are ready to move on and leave the fry on their own.