Spawning Question

[Abhijit S]

#35089

I ordered 3 plakat females from ebay and they arrived 2-3 days ago. A koi, a Royal blue and a Butterfly DT. Since they were from the same seller and with the limited space i had, i quarantined them together in a 1.5 gallon container (after acclimatization). As soon as i released them together, i noticed two of them, the koi and Royal Blue, started doing spawning embrace and to my surprise, after careful observation, i realized the Royal Blue was actually a male. [Seller said he is going to fix this.]

I already had an unsuccessful pair set up in a breeding tank where i was about to remove the female and the bubble nest created by male was almost gone. So i removed the female form existing breeding tank and place the new koi female in. The male immediately started attacking her and she was taking a beating. The breeding tank had the chimney setup so i captured the female under chimney and removed the male. Now i placed her fiance, the Royal blue male, in the breeding tank and had him kick started with some borrowed bubble nest form other males with a spoon. The male built a big bubble nest soon after. I released the female this evening (after one day of being in the chimney) and they immediately started spawning embraces (I didn’t see any eggs fall until i watched, for about 10 mins). I let them do their stuff for about an hour and after that, i saw them apart as if they were done spawning. i don’t see any eggs in the nest, the female’s egg spot still looks elongated, i can’t tell for sure if there are any eggs in the nest (assuming there aren’t any), the male is very docile towards the female and still inviting her to his nest, i don’t know if female still has (fertile) eggs or she released them and ate them.

I know they were stressed from shipment and may or may not have been conditioned by the seller, still it does not make sense to me why a female (if stressed) would be so eager to spawn after the shipment. The way shipment was packed, they couldn’t see each other.

I am going to leave them together tonight and separate them only if i think there is a danger to the female or if they dont spawn eod tomorrow…

Please advise.

[Author]

Posts