Peppermint BN Behaviour

[TW]

I've had my pepps for a while now, but it's only recently that the oldest amongst my young adults have started to breed.

I think they are only having a very small hatching rate, maybe due to parents youth & inexperience or else the wild discus they are with are quickly eating them.

I have a few BN breeding newbie Q's.

How long between spawns? I only spotted the first few a couple of weeks back and tonight I saw 2 that look way too small to be of the same batch.

When the eggs hatch, do the young stay with the patents in the cave, or does parental care cease upon hatching?

What does it look like when the dad is fanning his eggs? There is one cave in the tank where I often see just the back half of a pepp. It looks like it had ants in it's pants. Instead of resting fairly still like I see the other pepps at rest, this one seems I'm constant motion. I don't know whether this is fanning of eggs or just a fidgety pepp. If he is fanning, it seems strange ad it was just tonight that I saw the 2 extra tiny pepps, but he is still doing his fidgety motion in his cave.

[ILLUSN]

generally yhre females are ready to breed every 3 to 4 weeks with good conditioning

fry usually hang in the cave with dad for a week before leaving the cave some adventurous youngsters will leave earlier dad will fan the fry untill their yolk sacs are absorbed.

when dads fanning he stays in the cave head in when you look into the cave his fins will be waving fresh water over the eggs and fry his tail will be moving side to side (figity motion).

early spawns are 18-30 eggs as they get older the spawns get bigger my mid size gilrs easily have 50 fry my massive girls have over 150 but they only spawn once a year twice at best.