a few tips and questions:
- how big is your tank? P typus is quite social, but 10 is a LARGE group....how is the ratio in your group?
-P typus doesn't like high hiding places. best way to aquire tunnellike hiding places is to soak the flowerpots in water for a day and saw them in 2 pieces from top to bottom. 1 piece laid flat on the sand will make a perfect tunnel.
The substrate should be sand or fine gravel or a mixture of both. P typus is a great digger and it'll use the sand to wall off the entrance.
-check for pale 'scratch' marks on flanks and heads! a sure sign the males are fighting over caves, females or territory. P typus can fight REAL HARD; I've seen them busting up each other....
-if breeding is your aim, you need more tanks. Once a pair has succesfully claimed a cave, you better separate this pair and put them in a tank of their own. with a penlight you can observe them and check for spawns or mated pairs.
-Spawns are visible as extended throats of the parents; this chinless fish suddenly develops a very conspicious 'chin' when carrying a mouthful.
-to get them into spawning mood special care for food is needed. next to the regular bloodworms, crustaceans, flakes and tabs -they really like tab-food- live fish must be fed (!). P typus is a piscivore that is capable of eating fish 1/3 it's own size
, this means an adult 4" typus-male can and does swallow fish up to the size of an adult female guppy or a small female shelldwelling cichlid!
home-bred guppies are perfect for this, of course you shouldn't just buy random fish for this aim; those can contain several transmittable parasites such as gutworms or skindiseases and then you'll lose your fish.