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I think my male and female are getting reado to breed but i have a few questions. The female, Silver, has been moving in and courting the male, Bud, by flahsing at home, waving her tail and just flirting. Bud in turn showns his bristles, breathes hard and just kinda returns her advances nonchalant. The problem is I don't think he has eaten in about a week since all of this has started. If he is eating, he is doing it at night long after the lights have been turned off. He still acts healthy and has lots of energy but he ins't over exuberant about eating. He used to chase the female off the zucchini and wafers, now he just sits there and watches her.

Is this normal behavior for BN getting ready to spawn? Bud is 5" and Silver is 3". She is getting very heavy looking. They have driftwood and a ceramic cave.
10 gallon tank
pH - 6.8-7.0
GH - 12
KH - 8
NO2 - 0
NH4 - 0
NO3 - 20-30ppm
PO4 1.5-3ppm
Feed shrimp pellets, algae wafers, zucchini, peas
Tank planted well
Tank mate include 7 C. Trilineatus, 1 betta and 9 neon tetra

Sounds pretty normal to me. Is the male staying by a cave? He may have staked it out and is now afraid to leave for fear that another male will steal it.
-Shane

I am going to add a couple more caves, get some crushed coral to raise the pH and get some blood worms to see if that helps. I guess the pH needs to be between 7.0 and 7.4 so that could be why Bud is moping more than he normally does. He has kinda staked out a cave but he doesn't seem to interested, he does defend it though.

I doubt that there's anything wrong with your pH... In their natural habitat, the typical pH range is between 4 and 7.5, depending on which region they come from. Since the normal common bristlenose is happy to breed just about everywhere in the world without any problems, I'd say pH is of little importance.

Good feeding, a drop in water temp perhaps, and some calm is probably the best method to make them breed. Messing about with changing the water parameters should be done once you have established that this is what's keeping the fish from breeding...

Not (visibly) eating for a week is fairly normal for these fish...

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Mats