1 ) Choose a male and female fish of roughly the same size (to avoid one of them ending up badly injured) , but do not house them together yet .
2 ) The pair should be given a lot of nutritious food ( live food / high quality pellet ).
3 ) Place the male in breeding tank and let the male getting used to his new home .
4 ) Put the female in a container and gently place it in the breeding tank . This will prevent the male from getting at her right away.
5 ) Carefully monitor your fish and see if they show any interest in each other . Flaring is a good sign, and hopefully the male will soon start building a bubblenest.
6 ) Do not release the female from the container until the male has built a fairly big bubble nest and the female is showing vertical strips ( not visible in light colour ) . She should also be assuming a head-standing position and ideal have a protruding breeding tube (look behind the pelvic fin - clearly visible white dot).
7 ) When you release the female, it is perfectly natural for the couple to engage in some nipping and chasing. Keep an eye on them and only intervene if one or both is getting badly injured. Really violent attacks means that they couple is not ready to breed, or simply incompatible. Place the female back inside the hurricane bowl and let her stay for a few days.Some couples need to be together for 4-5 days before they start to breed while others can start within an hour. Some females will even start releasing eggs while they are still inside the hurricane bowl.
8 ) When the time is right, the male will try to attract the female to his nest and she will follow him. As they reach the nest, the male will embrace the female and she will release her eggs. The eggs will sink to the bottom of the aquarium and the male will swim down and pick them up (sometimes male doesn,t pick the egg but female does) . Directly after releasing her eggs, it is normal for the female to stay completely still and motionless for few seconds while the male swims down. When the spawning is finished, the female will leave the nest voluntarily or be chased away by the male. In most situations she will have plenty of time to swim away and hide while he is down at the bottom searching for eggs. The female should now be removed from the aquarium since she will either eat the eggs or be violently attacked by the male as she tries to eat the eggs.