Family pictures..aaaawwww

I recently realised that it's been years and years since i last dedicated a thread to my wonderful H.orientalis, and that's a wrong that could not be left unrighted.
And what a great time to dedicate them a thread, too, since there are now multiple generations of them and they are all doing fantastic.

Let's begin with the matriarch, the supreme ruler of The Land Between The glasses (well, water, really...). She has been laying eggs for months now and is looking quite thin at the moment, but don't let her fool you, she will balloon into her final form at any moment and continue to inflict her spawn unto humanity!
(Click her disfigured image to see her good side)


Her male companion and their two young sons weren't available for the family pictures because they are...ahem....too "excited" to stay put for a picture...

Now, one of the two lovely youngsters that have gone aquatic and are bussy rediscovering that swimming thing.


And two of their somewhat less precocious siblings in their java moss wastelands.



And finally, representing the unmetamorphosized contingent, Commander Behemoth, The Very Large, who might get a promotion soon, leaving a vacancy for the next hopeful larva.

Excuse the mess, but as you can see, my gravid females are geniuses. Had to block up the hole with some Java moss after this.

They couldn't resist, i mean it's just there, beckoning, taunting..."get stuck here" it whispers...
We can pretend that we wouldn't have done the same, but who'd we be fooling, really...

Such a great species. My two females had been laying constantly for over 11 months so in December I took them out for a cooling period (a rest from laying) and they went back to a normal size. Four days ago, after six weeks cooling, I put them back in the tank. Since then the male has been courting and yesterday I watched the female lay two or three eggs, unfortunately the male was following her around eating them! This year I'm not going to be taking the eggs out to raise, I'm just going to leave them in to grow in the tank because the parents don't seem to eat larvae (they do enjoy the odd egg though!) and the tank is full of microfauna.

Stuart

Stupot1610 said:

Such a great species. My two females had been laying constantly for over 11 months so in December I took them out for a cooling period (a rest from laying) and they went back to a normal size. Four days ago, after six weeks cooling, I put them back in the tank. Since then the male has been courting and yesterday I watched the female lay two or three eggs, unfortunately the male was following her around eating them! This year I'm not going to be taking the eggs out to raise, I'm just going to leave them in to grow in the tank because the parents don't seem to eat larvae (they do enjoy the odd egg though!) and the tank is full of microfauna.



Stuart

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I had to raise all of mine in the parent tank and take them out when they morph, the first batch that I took out refused to eat anything and died while the ones in the tank feeding on leftover bloodworms and microinverts grew fine, I haven't had as much of an egg eating problem lately, right now the tank is crawling with larvae of all sizes

I leave my Cynops eggs and larvae with the parents until they morph, its simply a matter of picking them out the moss on the turtle dock every once in while. There's even a population of aphids of some kind on the floating Aponogenton leaves for their first few meals!
Given this is a Happy families thread here's a snap of daddy pyrrho and his delinquent son.

You have a great looking family there! I can't wait to start breeding mine one day. That is so funny how she got stuck in the pot! They love squeezing into places don't they?

gclama said:

You have a great looking family there! I can't wait to start breeding mine one day. That is so funny how she got stuck in the pot! They love squeezing into places don't they?

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Mine have been laying for the past 7 months, hoping they will stop tbh