PlanetCatfish.com

Hi Everyone,

When my BN started spawning in April of this year it was very exciting Naively I thought it would be a one-off event or maybe just a few times a year keeping the growout of the fry manageable. However, they have been spawning nearly non-stop, there are constantly new fry emerging from the cave and the process starts over. I have so many fry of various ages that I don't know how I will be able to find homes for all of them - and it is putting a very serious toll on my filtration system. I remove as many of them as I can catch and put them in a fry growout tank, but since the main tank is heavily planted and they are really fast I catch most of them when they get into the filter sock. Is there a way to discourage spawning, other than removing one of the fish? Perhaps if I removed the male's cave? My concern with that is there are other caves being used by other fish and when I first got him, he was quite feisty in trying to kick the other fish out of his preferred cave. So if I take away his spawning cave he might start harassing the other fish, some of which are quite shy.

Thanks for any suggestions!!

You either segregate the sexes or use the eggs/fry as fish food otherwise BN will over run any breeding tank.
They are extremely prolific as you have discovered.

Apitsomaster is correct. Even pulling ALL the caves didn't work for me. My males were tenacious and dug caves in the substrate. Segregation is the only fail safe method.

If you don't have a spare tank a tank divider works. It's a bit ugly and inconvenient but you don't need to remove fish just place in and remove again when you want them to spawn.

Thank you! I'll be separating them as suggested