Well, not quite murder, but may have been.

Those little Amphilophus babies are bastards. I came down to feed everyone around 11am yesterday to see the mama not acting right. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I had to take the kid to school and take care of a few things before I could really get into what was going on.

So around 2ish, I got back to take care of the fish, to see now that the back fins were all torn up. Not as bad as the male, but in almost the exact same way. So at that point I was curious just what was going on, so I sat and watched, and waited and watched, and after about 5 minutes, (where the either got used to me sitting there or forgot) I see the bigger fry, the ones that are almost 1/4 inch starting to pick at the mama.

Oy.

So now the male and female are in his and hers tanks next to each other, and I got some planning to do as to what and where I can put everyone. Maybe I need to set up musical tanks, they can breed in one then I move the two into another tank, the fry get big, Snappy gets to eat them, lather rinse repeat.

Interesting. I never would have guessed it was the fry.

rotten little buggers...sounds like you are going to have to move them every time, almost sounds like a lot of work....!

Surprised the hell out of me too. I'm still leaning towards the female roughing up the male, but the fry were picking on the female. I know some (Discus I think) make a slime coating that the fry then eat, I should look up to see if these guys do it too

The volume of fry is pretty decent, so if they keep it up, I was already planning on getting two tanks set up and a divider.

I'll get them to breed in the first tank, and after a few weeks move them into the other tank and divide it. Once the supply of Snappy Snacks(tm) starts running low, I'll remove the divider and let 'em get going in that tank.

It's a little early on now, but if I can get a decent system worked out, I can set things up to be able to feed anything bigger a bit easier. All the feeders they bring in at the fish farm are the usual size you see in the chain stores. So making a regular supply of big feeders may be handy.