Saturday, April 21, 2007

Oh my goodness! Definite aquarium excitement! The panda cories are breeding!!!! I was taking dinner out of the oven tonight, and noticed that the cories were acting crazy; zooming up and down the glass, chasing each other, and clustering in a wiggly group. I looked closer, and saw definite mating!

I took some movies, but this is my first time uploading to YouTube, and I'm not entirely sure if I did it right. I apologize for the abysmal video quality- I know my camera doesn't take great movies, but I swear, they didn't look this bad before I uploaded them! (Edited to add: OK, now I see that I had my camera set to the low video quality. D'oh! Sorry!)

This first clip is of the courting behavior. The female is in front, the two males are in back.



And this clip is courtship leading to mating. Both males start out trying to get the female's attention, then when they move into the java fern, one male is successful and gets to mate, and the other male swims off.



I saw the female carrying around eggs a couple times, and depositing them on the java fern leaves. I may see if I can find a couple and raise some babies. I don't think they'll make it if I leave them in the tank unprotected. The tetras were very very interested in what was happening in the java fern, and I know that panda cories will also sometimes eat their own eggs and fry.

So cool!

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