Darters Breeding In Community Tank?

Just an academic question at this point. I know I have a nice big male tesselated but don't know if any of the others are mature females [they're mostly much smaller]. I just moved them into a bigger tank with more caves and hiding places. The water is running a few degrees warmer than the last tank [further from the open window, extra powerhead]. Within minutes of being released into the new tank, the big male took over a cave under a flat rock. He has been seen frequently swimming upsidedown in the cave. He is coloring up a bit too.
Questions;
Would the male color up and scout caves if there was no mature female?
How much smaller can the females be?
If they do have eggs in the community tank, can I remove the whole rock with eggs attached?
I'm really just curious at this point. I don't have any big plans to breed these guys. If they do go ahead and do it on their own, I'll have to decide how to deal with it. Might just end up being live food for the tank mates.

Hi,

I have no advice for you, but I've got 2 tessellated darters in a 33g natives tank and about 3 wks ago I did a major clean/gravel vac + large waterchange and some rearranging and ever since he has been quite coloured up. He looks so drastically different than the other one you'd almost think it was a different fish! But the other one doesn't look like it's carrying eggs or anything..

I'm quite interested to hear what happens with yours!

Irene

My male tessellated darter has been doing the same thing for a few weeks now, he's really colored up and he's constantly on the underside of rocks.

The female could care less

What happened with your darters?

False alarm.
First, my biggest female some how got wedged between a rock and the tank glass and expired before I noticed her missing.
Not long after, the male stopped visiting the cave he had been spending so much time in and lost the dark color except at feeding times.
Next, I recieved some rainbow darters which seem to be out competing the smaller tesselateds at feeding time. I just noticed yesterday the smaller tesselateds were getting skinny despite a ridiculous amount of food added to the tank. I realized I had changed my feeding method from target feeding around the various zones of the tank to adding all the food to the strongest current. I did that because the rainbows get right up into the strongest current and the various minnows and dace are close behind. I liked the natural look of it - seemed like the bottom of a real river. Last night though I realized all the smaller tesselated [including all the females] were hanging back in the much slower current and very little food was reaching them. They'd make forays into the current but seemed inept at grabing the food zipping by.
I'm gonna have to go back to distributing the food around the tank so everybody gets enough.
As far as breeding goes, I guess I'll have to decide if I want to set up a seperate "cool down" tank. Now that my furnace runs nonstop, tank temps in the river set up rarley go below 65 F.
I'm contemplating setting up a 20 long over by the bulkhead going outside from the cellar. I used to brumate native wild caught snakes there and it always worked good.

Thanks for the update Mike.

I think mine have done the deed. There's some eggs under a rock and the male keeps going upside down and fanning them. Anybody have any suggestions about what I should I do?

Thanks for the update Mike.

I think mine have done the deed. There's some eggs under a rock and the male keeps going upside down and fanning them. Anybody have any suggestions about what I should I do?

Well...perhaps I am a little late in responding... I would say that getting a culture of baby brine shrimp (BBS) going would be important. Do darters typically eat their young at a certain point (ie. kick them out of the nest)... If so, I'd remove the fry with a turkey baster and put them in an isolation tank/breeder net once they become free swimming. Regular (like 3+ times a day) feedings of quality foods (BBS, Daphnia, Rotifers, Cyclops-eeze, Hikari 1st bites, Wardley Small Fry food...in that order of preference from my experience) and lots of regular (every other day or so depending on filtration) water changes should keep your loss rates to a minimum. Remember that out of a spawn of several hundred, only a few fish would make it to adulthood in the wild, so a "good" survival rate would be 30% in my opinion.