Had an interesting situation with the Black/ Silver pair. Some back ground info on her: I had her by herself for quite some time and she spawned twice on her own. Then, I put her in with some adult Guppies a while ago as she seemed to be acting oddly which I attributed to her isolation. She recovered. That was then.....
This is now: I immediately removed the slate full of eggs after their spawn the other day and I replaced it with another slate in the same location. You could tell they expected the eggs to still be on the slate by the way they responded to it and looked intently for their eggs. They seemed okay with the disappearing eggs at feeding time but yesterday, I noticed the male had a few torn parts on his tail. I just figured the female was a little annoyed with him for losing the eggs ( which sometimes happens). Today, the nips turned into all out attacks on him so I put an eggcrate divider in the tank to try and save the male from any more damage. Well that didn't work as somehow, he managed to get back to her side while I was out of the building. So when I saw this, I took out the divider as he obviously wants to be with her. Then, when I went back in for feeding time, she was back to giving it to him bad so I put the divider back in again. By the time I was done with feeding, he was back on her side again
so I pulled the divider again and turned out the lights.
It's been a while since I have had fish blaming each other for a lost spawn but this is definitely what's going on here. So, for now, I've decided that their next spawn, I will let them try to raise as long as the current spawn is doing well. Worst case, I will leave the eggs in a jar in the breeder's tank so they can see them and see how that goes when they get removed.
One of the tasks to breeding fish is understanding the fish's behavior. Not all fish act this way or that way so you need to understand what every way is. With Angels, fights happen, fish get marked up and injured. That's all part of the game. But it's obvious that that male wants to be with that female even tho she is on his case about the eggs. He did a good job on fertilizing the eggs as there are few dead ones at this stage, which makes him a viable fish to breed continuously. So we will see what happens from here. I want to know before I expose her to the 1/2 black male.
On the baby front, I am seeing a number of Gold Angels in the spawns from the GM/ Koi pair. I want to keep them to try to get back some good gold angels in the mix. I should have the grow out rack operational in a few days so it shouldn't be a space issue.