Hyalobagrus flavus - male & female interactions

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

I hesitate to call it spawning, as I saw no eggs, but that's kind of what it looks like to me.

I was on a ladder scraping algae from the glass of another tank when the flavus cats caught my attention. Of course I left my phone in the house charging, so after observing for several minutes, I made a break for it to grab my phone and fortunately still caught a representative sample of the action.


After capturing that I switched my camera to 4K, but I wasn't able to capture as good of footage.

Here the female that we saw enter the bamboo from the previous video is poking out. If you look closely there's at least one other individual in there.


For good measure, just an overview of the tank, so you can see what their environment looks like

[bekateen]

Not having any clue what spawning behavior looks like in this fish, that certainly looks like it could be. Let' hope so!

Cheers,
Eric

[Silurus]

Not sure if I’m seeing it right, but if the fish are swimming side by side and occasionally shuddering, I’ve seen this in a number of bagrids. Not sure if it’s an agonistic display or a prelude to spawning.

[Jools]

I've been told more than once that the female fish will exhibit blue/green eggs when gravid. I can't quite make that out, but it could be two males "discussing" a good potential spawning site or it could be a pair establishing themselves.

This species hasn't been spawned in captivity, or at least the event documented. So, to think about it potentially needing specific structure (as opposed to being an egg scatterer or placing eggs on leafs, rocks, etc.) is a new idea for me. Feels like a very good new idea.

Cheers,

Jools