View attachment 392904 View attachment 392903
Some of my NTs tetras posture at times by swimming at 45 degrees with their head down and twitching their tails. It looks like a signal to a nearby NT, not a sign of distress, because they swim away normally after about 20 seconds.
Any specific meaning to that? I can't see if it's males or females only or both that are doing this but it makes me think of courting behavior, even though I have not found a description of this anywhere. The only thing that comes up in google is 'bladder problems" but I doubt very much that is it.
Neon Tetras don't usually court like that but hey, it's been years since I've bred them so who knows?
Typically, a male will get next to a female and shimmy/shake next to her while forcing her into a bunch of frilly plants. Once in the plants, the female sprays the area with eggs and the male goes around immediately afterwards and fertilizes them. Once they are done, they leave the plants to recoup. The problem happens if you leave the breeders in with the eggs because after they settle down they may go back and eat the eggs or they can eat the fry.
With that said, none of the fish you have circled look like very gravid females so this may just be 2 males getting pissy with each other. This is what a gravid female normally looks like:
She gets a much rounder belly area. It's very visible viewing from the top looking down.
Also typically, after a water change or moving into a new tank, the males may get amorous while the females aren't gravid so they are just wasting their time.
They usually breed at dawn or dusk because the eggs are photosensitive so they will die if under lights. I used to breed my Tetras by a window, not in front of a window but along one so in the ambient light of dawn they would spawn and I was usually there early enough to pull the parents if I knew they had spawned. ( You can see if the females were still skinny or fat to know.) The pair would go into the tank the night before. They would usually spawn within 48 hours.
If you can post a video link to this behavior, it's much easier to tell what's happening rather than in still shots.
