When your rare cats spawn without you (Tachysurus trilineatus)

[Narelle]

I had to leave a couple of my fish tanks with my mom when I moved about a year ago. She's keeping them for me until I get to a stable enough situation to get the rest of my tanks.
Among the fish I had to leave was my trio of Tachysurus trilineatus in their hillstream set up.
She just called me to tell me that 1" fry have showed up at feeding time!

No pictures yet, but this is very exciting so I had to share. I'll be home on the 1st, so I'll get to see them myself.

No idea what triggered spawning. She did just a 10g (out of 55g) water change last.

Here's an old picture of dad.

[bekateen]

Hi Narelle,

That's spectacular, congratulations!

But oh the frustration of knowing your fish waited for you to be away and spawned for someone else.

Cheers, Eric

[TwoTankAmin]

I have found that our fish want to spawn for the most part. Further, we need not do anything to encourage this more often than not. Our main role in this process not to do things which might discourage them. This all was a most depressing discovery for me as it proved I was not spawning anything, I was simply not preventing it by making mistakes.

Despite this revelation, I still get excited when I see new eggs or wigglers or fry in my tanks.

So you definitely should still do the happy fish dance.

[Jools]

That is really cool! Well done and I hope you get pics of the fry to share soon!

Cheers,

Jools

[Shane]

Wow, just wow.
-Shane

[Narelle]

I'm in FL so I have an update!
The fry are very fast and hard to photograph, but we were able to get some decent videos.




The first video is just one fry, but it was the clearest one. The second shows dad and two fry, which gives a good sense of scale.
(You'll also notice there's a ruler taped to the edge of the tank that's more visible on that one, but we didn't do a great job getting that in the videos for the most part.)

My male T. trilineatus has always been exceptionally aggressive. He has beat up the females from the start and continues to chase them away from his cave and the fry, but seems to be content sharing space with the fry and possibly guarding them? I'm surprised to see this paternal behavior from him with the fry already so large and with how aggressive he's always been.

[bekateen]

Super neat!

[Jools]

If you get more pictures or videos you can let me use I'd be very interested in updating the site with more details of your success.

Great stuff!

Jools

[jeremybasch]

Amazing! Congrats! Some views of the set up would be great. The tank appears to be set up similar to the hillstream loaches that we see.

[Hanka]

I'm in FL so I have an update!
The fry are very fast and hard to photograph, but we were able to get some decent videos.




The first video is just one fry, but it was the clearest one. The second shows dad and two fry, which gives a good sense of scale.
(You'll also notice there's a ruler taped to the edge of the tank that's more visible on that one, but we didn't do a great job getting that in the videos for the most part.)

My male T. trilineatus has always been exceptionally aggressive. He has beat up the females from the start and continues to chase them away from his cave and the fry, but seems to be content sharing space with the fry and possibly guarding them? I'm surprised to see this paternal behavior from him with the fry already so large and with how aggressive he's always been.

Congratulations! i am planning to get an aquarium set up in my living room, still researching on the type of catfish i would want to keep, hoping i will not be away when mine spawn, would not want to miss that given they will be my first..

[Sand]

How cool is that! I always shut my filtration and bubbler off when I feed my tanks.