Dwarf Honey Gourami is making a bubble nest

[pcc]

Hi, I have a male honey gourami making a bubble nest on the bottom side of a red dwarf aquarium lily leaf that is floating on the top surface of the tank. This is in a community tank which houses honey gouramis, cherry barbs, neon tetras, otocinculus, Cory's, kuhli loaches and one pair of fire red apistogramma agassizi. Any advice on how to improve thier chances of successfully breeding? I do not have another tank to put them in. I do have several water sprite plants floating close to the nest.  He just started the nest building today.

[Guppysnail]

I have not yet had fry with my group of honeys so take this as just a few spitball ideas please. With the tetras and barbs I would think the fry will have a limited survival chance. Maybe watch close each day as the sun comes up/ lights go on and fish them out as they appear. You can raise them in a bucket with a heater and sponge filter until they are too big to fit in others mouths. 
 

[Fish Folk]

It is very difficult to raise bubblenest-spawning Anabantid fry in a small community aquarium. We successfully spawned dwarf gourami fry once, in a species-only tank. Brooders were removed very soon after spawning. But once fry appeared, one became a “runner” and ate all siblings. We raised that one to near adulthood. Bred Bettas once, but the fry crashed due to poor water quality. My guess is that those barbs and tetras will massacre any fry.

One idea: if you can _see eggs_ in the nest, you can create a floating flow-through fry tray, just put it in _underneath_ the nest, thereby isolating it without changing water chemistry.

Somewhere on the Forum I think I posted how to build one. Here are photos of the early version…

Now, I prefer to use a simple Rubbermaid / Tupperware dish. 

[Rube_Goldfish]

@Hobbit @Guppysnail

You've got some honey gourami breeding experience, right? Any hope here for @pcc 's fry?

[knee]

I accidentally grew croaking gourami fry in a community-ish tank. By accidentally I mean I didn’t do anything and just let nature take its course. Other fish in the tank were white cloud minnow, cherry barb and badis ruber. The fry had plenty of frogbit as cover tho.