My dojo loaches spawned!!

[stanleo]

I swear I’m not making this up. The angelfish fry just started swimming today or never would have noticed. At first I saw what looked like eggs floating in the water. Perfectly round opaque eggs and they would fall on the swords and stick there. The angels were eating them like candy. Then I noticed the loaches swimming together around a ditch in the substrate. I couldn’t figure what was going on then the female would swim to the top and release about a dozen eggs into the water. She also keeps releasing air from her cloaca which is swollen. It’s amazing to watch. I got about 4 minutes on video. Seriously fish says instances of them spawning are scarce and they haven’t found one containing any significant detail. So here it is.

I have one male and one female.
120 gallon (455ltr) tank.
Ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 5ppm.
50% water change weekly temp matched and dechlorinated.
KH 1 degree GH 3 degrees
pH 6.4
Photoperiod is 7 hrs daily.
Temp is 78F (26C)
Tank is heavily planted with swords, Java fern, Christmas moss, anubais, frogbit, water sprite.
These loaches are three and a half years old, female is 7 inches and male is a little over 5 inches.
This happened in the middle of April.


Not sure if this was a factor but we had a huge storm go through yesterday, high winds, lightning, tornado warnings, and heavy rain that knocked the power out for two hours.

I would love to post the video but I don’t know how. Can anyone teach me?

I caught several eggs and placed them in my planned nano tank that doesn’t have fish yet. I don’t know if they will hatch but the water parameters are identical to the large tank.

 

[mikey11]

I would love to post the video but I don’t know how. Can anyone teach me?

it's probably easiest to post the video to another website like youtube.....then just post the link here

 

[stanleo]

Ok let me try this. Around 2:15 you can see the air escaping the cloaca. At the very end you can make out one of the eggs in the middle of the leaf on the screen.