Suprise krib fry! Well, sort of.

Last night I was looking at my tank, checking things out, and especially looking at my kribs. I've had 6 kribs in my 75 gallon community for a few months, and I was planning on narrowing it down to 1 pair and then rehoming/selling the others. I knew I had 2 pairs for sure. I had not seen any eggs or anything, but they would get really brightly colored every few weeks. They were also sharing caves.

Anyway, I had been thinking that I'd somehow lost one since I could only ever see 5 at a time. It was always 3 females and 2 males. Then last night as I was just enjoying the tank, I realized that the female with the larger male had a cloud of tiny fry surrounding her. The male was chasing off anything that came near them. Then I started counting again, and realized that the female that I thought was his mate was actually another unmated female! Duh!

That explains why he suddenly had started ramping up the aggression and bickering with the others.

And, of course, when I went to take a pic, the battery had died! And I couldn't find my charger for the camera. Grrr.

Looks like I'm down to just 2 fry. When I came home from work last night, I checked the tank and couldn't see the female. I figured she was in the cave with the fry. I had to get going to a friend's house, so I didn't look real long. When I got home, I was dropping in the shrimp pellets and snail jello for my snails and plecos, and I looked for the krib family again. I saw the male and female, but I didn't see any fry. Looked a little harder and finally saw 2 little guys poking at the gravel. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of them. I'm figuring that the other fish picked them off.

Also, I noticed the female doing what appeared to be attempting to pick up the fry with her mouth. I don't know for sure if she was just picking up some food next to the fry or what. She never actually got it in her mouth, but I thought it was weird. Anyone else notice this?