For some time we have watched a breeding pair of Royal Twig Catfish, as the Sturisoma aureum are sometimes called, in a display tank at the Henley Pet Centre in St. Catharines. (By the way they spawn frequently but the babies seem to be quite difficult to raise.) These beauties are almost twice the size of our specimens so we figured we might have a long wait before any breeding was likely to happen.

Our Sturisoma pair were made comfortable in a twenty-five gallon tank with a couple of box filters, some greenery and a piece of wood. The tank was also inhabited by a school of Lemon Tetras and two female Corydoras aeneus.

They were fed mainly crushed green beans and a little spirulina flake. We softened the water slightly by adding a bit of RO (Reverse Osmosis) water with each partial change.
 
The only exciting thing that happened in that tank during the next couple of months was that we discovered two baby Lemon Tetras in the greenery and removed the adults in order to attempt a spawning.
 
Perhaps they were inspired by the Full Moon. Late on the evening of Friday the 14^th of November when I went down to check for the presence of babies in the tetra spawning tank I noticed a rather remarkable display of Sturisoma calisthenics. The female who is somewhat smaller than the male and doesn't have a fringe of bristles on her cheeks was "standing" perfectly straight up and down on the male's head against the glass. I decided on the spot that such a performance was worth an extra bean and proceeded to pop one into the tank.
 
The lights were turned off and I thought no more about it until Saturday morning. The male, now by himself, had assumed an unusual position on the glass. A closer examination revealed that he was tending a clutch of about 35 rather large eggs. The eggswere approx. 3 mm in diameter and appeared clear until you looked closely. Each one had a pale yellow yolk. Hindsight told me clearly that I had missed the spawning sequence and I kicked myself for my stupidity. As it turned out there would be many more opportunities.
 
We removed the rest of the tetras and began partial daily water changes. With timeouts for eating, father did all the egg tending, occasionally warning mother away with a waft of his tail. Over the course of the next five days the eggs turned darker and darker until they appeared to be almost black. With a magnifying glass the developing baby catfish could be seen shifting positions inside the eggs.

On the 21^st the first egg hatched. Father appeared to help the process by chewing vigorously at the egg's outer membrane. On the 22^nd more hatched and the two Cory cats were quickly removed when they were observed snapping up baby twig cats like children popping gummy bears. By the 23^rd, (8 days from spawning), all were hatched and busily searching the bottom and sides of the tank for something suitable to eat.

Green beans just don't seem to make it with newly hatched babies and some of them started to die. Some were moved to another algae covered tank where they survived for a while and then died off one by one. An algae covered anubias was placed in the spawning tank and this was cleaned off quite rapidly but less than half of our first spawn survived and we weren't satisfied.