Who Gives A Fish Forums

Hi everyone, I've got a bit of a fishy mystery on my hands. So, I had these two fish in a breeding net - one's a blue one (think it's a Salousi, not entirely sure how you spell it) and the other's a yellow lab. Anyway, the blue one had her babies at the start of the week and she's back in the main tank now. She gave birth to 18 little ones in the net, and up until this morning, they were all accounted for. The yellow lab's still in the net, with a divider keeping her separate from the babies in the bottom. Just counted them, and I've got 11 left. Here's the weird part - I looked closely, and the yellow lab's got blue and yellow babies in her mouth. Is this normal behavior? My only guess is that the babies swam up through the tiny slats in the plastic and the yellow lab thinks they're hers. She seems perfectly happy, swimming around with a mouth full of babies. Any thoughts or similar experiences?

I've heard of something similar happening in the wild. Apparently, certain catfish will lay their eggs in the clutch of a cichlid, and the cichlid will end up taking care of them. Not exactly what's going on here, but it shows that fish can sometimes adopt others' young. In your case, it seems like the yellow lab just thinks the blue fry are hers, which is pretty funny.

I've got a similar setup and it's crazy what can happen. I mean, it could literally be anything in there, couldn't it?