A different sort of T position?

[Mol_PMB]

After a water change in my community tank this evening, I was watching my

Corydoras melini

putting on quite a show. I got the camera out and took a load of photos. On sorting through them (searching for good ones) I found that I had captured 3 occasions with a sort of T-position in mid water.

I have seen these guys mating before (and even had one lucky survivor) and seen the more conventional mating T-position on the substrate, before the female takes the eggs away and places them (often on the the floating plants or the glass). I've not noticed this mid-water behaviour before. I can't see any eggs involved so is this some sort of foreplay?

Any thoughts?

[bekateen]

I can't say whether or not a mid-water T-position is anything new compared to the T-position at ground level, but what I can see is that these are really nice pics! Very well timed, snapped at just the right moments.

Hopefully this means you'll have melini eggs within the day (or two). You may not have seen any in the female's pelvic fins, but look around, you may find them scattered among the plants. These cats are little sneeks! LOL

Cheers, Eric

[smitty]

Really captured some nice photos. Maybe they are trying to pair up.

[Mol_PMB]

Thanks

They've spawned in this tank several times but there are lots of hungry mouths that tend to eat the eggs.
I've tried removing the eggs and hatching them elsewhere but I'm no good at raising them. The only one survivor was actually in the community tank and was a complete surprise - you can see him now nearly grown-up in the attached picture.

More of this evening's pics here if you're interested:
http://www.tropicalfishforums.co.uk/ind ... msg2327433

[bekateen]

That's a cool photo - they look like some kind of train, dragging one-another through the tank.

I remember the story/thread where you discovered that one little scooter. It was so cute. In terms of raising young separately, do you have a 2 - 5 gallon tank you could hatch them in, away from the adults? Then as they grow, transfer them up to a 10 gal?