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There is no way I can get a picture of the babies right now. Daddy has them locked up pretty tight in that cave! I only barely got the flashlight at the right angle to show me a ton of tiny eyeballs staring back at me!

But here's his butt hanging out, lol! It looks like their yolk sacs are already mostly gone, so he's had them for a little while now. I never even saw the eggs. And he had to be moved immediately after my discovery. The L397's are currently in a community tank with adult discus, cories, loaches, cardinal tetras, and a vampire shrimp. But I have a few open fry rearing tanks, so he got moved to one of those. This is the first Panaqolus species I have ever spawned!

Congratulations!

Congrats on the spawn

Great news. Congratulations

So I've ended up with THREE L397 spawns so far! A couple of days after I found the first one, I found another male with eggs. So I moved him to that fry rearing tank. Those have since hatched, and I found a THIRD one trapping. Once the female was done and I confirmed eggs, I moved that one as well!

In the meantime, the first male finally kicked them out of the cave. I've got a pic now! And the second male has a baby hanging (literally) at the edge of his cave so I captured a couple of pics and a very short video of the baby hanging on to the roof by his mouth. Even at just two days old, they have a pretty strong sucker mouth! I can't post the video on this forum, but I have the still image from it! (After taking the pic and video, I used a turkey baster to swoosh him back into the cave.)

Wonderful! They sure don't disappoint!

Cheers, Eric