Glad to see you got rid of the snails Danny. Those
spiral ones would be the carnivorus Malaysian
livebearering snail? They are treasured by people
raising plants and despised by most everyone trying to
spawn egglayers.
Your male Tateurndina ocellicauda will be a little
huskier. In time his head will develop a cephalic
hump, much like some cichlids. Ripe females will show
the roundness of tummy one would expect with females.
Back when we had them, the female showed a black band
running along the anal fin. That was the easier way to
sort them when they were found in a shop. ("Give me
two with the black band, two without, please.") It was
a bit of a surprise later it was the female which had
that black band.
Perusing a Google image search, some pairs don't seem
to have a member with that black line. Has it always
been the case that that some females lack that black
band or have we let them slip in the hobby?
The early TFH articles on spawning peacock gudgeons
indicated that the adults must be moved about hatching
time so they did not eat the fry. I had moved the pair
from a tank, cheerfully inhabited by their fry,
droppedtheir spawning pipe in a 2.5 gallon/ 9.5 liter
tank and left several blackworms in there with them,
anticipating a busy work week and some neglect of the
fish. At the end of the week, there were still a few
blackworms in that smaller tank. There was also a
school of fry, left alone by the parents.
We also slavishly copied the "cave" used in those TFH
articles. We found some 1/2 inch or 2.5 cm pvc pipe,
cut three inch/ 7.6 cm lengths and capped one end with
the plumbing end pipe. Those were handing, in that one
could siphon some of the tank water into another
recepticle, put their thumb over the entrance to the
cave, lift the guarding male and eggs and gently
deposite them in their new home.
As other reports of peacocks spawning in pots abd
other sheltered spots, it occured to us how few pvc
pipes were likely to be found in Papua New Guinea
streams. Still, they proved handy.
I wish I had though of using a small, gluttonish
livebearer fry to model the eating of crushed flake
food so that peacock fry would be conditioned to eat
the stuff. Still, they did fine on the baby brine
shrimp and other meaty foods they were given.
All the best!
Scott