I scarecly know what to think. I know breeding of this species is rare and my understanding is that there are a lot of factors involved to get it right. I have 3 juvenile sized striped raphaels in a 3 foot long 160l/40g tank which also contains a school of rosy barbs and a couple of guppies. I've furnished the bottom with sand and rocks arranged to provide cave structures. I have a larger tank which is not set up but it has always been in my mind to move the catfish across once they were large enough that they required more space, or if I saw any squabbling between them. They were 5cm when I got them 8 months ago, and I've had no thoughts of breeding them. I'm not exactly sure how big they are right now, maybe approximately 10cm but there are 2 smaller ones and one much fatter one that I rarely see. The tank is tall enough that I don't often clean the bottom very well, but there is enough flow that most of the larger debris is picked up in my pre-filter sponge. The point is, I really have done nothing particularly special to encourage breeding in this tank.
Today I found a large fat fry bumbling around near my filter inlet, apparently still carrying an egg sac. It's much larger than a newborn guppy fry, and I've bred rosy barbs before too and found the fry were barely visible when small enough to have an egg sac, so this doesn't match what I know either. After netting the fry to safety I've spent ages searching for more, but this one seems to be the only one. At the moment I don't have a free breeder box to put the fry in so I have him sitting in a net in my sterbai cory tank where hopefully he will be safe from predation even if he falls out of the net. The eyes of the fry reflect bright blue, which isnt something I've seen in either rosy barb or guppy fry.
Tried to get a decent picture but my camera's phone is awful. I had the idea to put the container on some knitting mesh to get an idea of the size of this little guy, unfortunately the holes are spaced an inconvenient 1/15 of an inch apart. So he's maybe a touch over 6mm long.
Could it be true? Did my raphaels really breed for me?
