Hi. oliesminis,
since neither Sarah or Inchworm has got back to you yet, and speaking as One Who Knows Nothing and can only speak of her own, limited and entirely amateur experience:
I suspect our fish breed a LOT more than we realize, but that eggs and fry have little chance even in a thickly planted community tank.
I'd see mine get jiggy but the eggs were evidently pretty tasty.
My pygmies been separate from all tetras now for over a month, and we've had several hatchings in total, although I unfortunately first noticed fry right AFTER hauling out potted plants and driftwood to go over the substrate beneath as best I could with a syphon.
Dumped about 12 gallons down the toilet without ever thinking to check - could have shot myself when I saw fry afterward, as I must have murdered fry - AND had done the same thing in another tank the previous week, conducting a large water change and dumping everything without checking, thinking the White Clouds would never miss any of the eggs they apparently produce as party snacks for each other, and noticing fry only afterward when I began to prune back the extremely overgrown hygro, although they do at least hang around on the water surface and are unlikely to have been sucked up.
Considering how badly I want more pygmies, it astounds me that I simply unconsciously assumed that such a deeply desired event as surviving pygmy fry wouldn't occur.
(I've even had a superstitious fear of talking about them in case I jinx them, somehow.
(But I've had them for a couple of years in a planted 35 gallon community tank without seeing any fry - but when newborn and for some time after, they're often hard to see even when you ARE looking for them.
(I don't want to try moving the babies out as it's a planted 35 gallon, they mostly poke around in and under the coarse, polished quartz gravel and some would likely get trapped as it shifted if they were syphoned for in any attempted move - and while I hope to be getting microworms to start a culture this weekend, I'm already concerned about them running out of tiny organisms to feed on in the larger tank.
(So, tetras are stuck in a q tank until the current, smallest pygmy babies are large enough to be unlikely to be eaten; the few survivors of the oldest ones are now miniature adults.
And if I can get those microworms going well in a couple of cultures so I can alternate use, and maybe some vinegar eels or some other tiny critters I hope they'll eat, I'll try setting up a small tank to put any further eggs visible into for - knock wood - hatching and raising.
It's so much better to have, as do you and Sarah, a dedicated tank with no voracious, fry-consuming critters in.)
But the pygmies do seem to breed a lot, as do various other fish - we just tend not to often see eggs, never mind fry, before they're devoured by other inhabitants.
My Central Mud Minnow has evidently consumed an entire cloud of newborn oto fry I briefly saw him hunting (until they disappeared into the jungle, the fry never to be seen again, and the minnow not much visible for quite a while, busily beating the bushes and watching the surface) not that long ago - usually any eggs spotted disappear quite quickly.
And sometimes he has a suspiciously bulging belly prior to feeding, the little stinker...
Pygmy babies are miniscule and speckledy, and spend a lot of time poking around in and under gravel and things, looking for tiny critters, so not terribly noticeable.
But if you have very small rasboras like Sarah's, (lucky devils) you shouldn't have any problems with eggs/fry being eaten, since she didn't.
But I'd advise checking the gravel area very carefully prior to water changes, checking dump water first for tiny, moving, long-tailed specks I really don't think I'd see in a bucket...
I have the use of a magnifying glass, and with pygmy fry, it comes in very handy.
I'm hoping somebody can benefit from my mistakes, since I certainly don't seem to...
