begginer breeding advice?

[rallyfanche]

Hey everyone. Well, I dont seem to be having any luck with breeding electric yellow labs...maybe Im starting out a bit hard. Im also wanting to switch my tanks over completely to a community tank, cichilds are just too aggressive. I was thinking dannios, angels, swordfishes, mollies...anything that is peaceful and community fish really. So the question is out there. What is a good starter fish to try and breed? Where does one go to get info on breeding fish (conditions, etc)??

any advice is appreciated.

-Alberto

[Mzungu]

Re: begginer breeding advice?

Most of the time if you want to have a successful spawn (ie. babies survive) you'll want to have a couple of tanks to work with. That way you can isolate the breeders and transfer them when they've done their thing and hatch the eggs by themselves. Unless, of course, you're thinking about livebearers, who pretty much are always pregnant.

If you're thinking about a community tank, you may not be very successful in raising babies because other fish like to eat eggs.

My advice would be to get a couple books, there are a lot out there about breeding fish in general, and tons of species-specific breeding books too.

[rallyfanche]

Re: begginer breeding advice?

Thats great advice! To be more specific, I do actually have 2 breeding tanks and a 10 gallon holding tank. My 125 gallon I was going to split off into 3 partitions, and my 30 gallon is split off into 2 partitions with solid slices of acrylic. The 125 gallon tank has 2 isolated filtration systems, while the 30 gallon has 1 filtration system with water moving between the 2 partitions. The 10 gallon extra tank is there just "in case".

My goal really isnt to have a community tank with lots of fish breeding, my goal largely was to create a large volume of fish for my 125 gallon tank. When I would reach a happy enough # of fish, I would put them all together in the 125 (partitions would go) and add a few larger community fish and some filter shrimp. Then appreciate that tank for a few months before...lets face it, I would get curious about breeding something else :-)

This project is largely motivated by the fact that Im getting rid of all my chichilds, loaches, and placos, and starting over from scratch. I figured this would be the time to have the best luck in breeding, when I have the greatest control of variables.

Question: do placo's eat fish eggs? I like to keep them around to keep the water clean, but have always wondered if they eat the eggs the fish are laying (if they are laying)

Any websites specific to breeding tetras, killifish, or dannios that anyone can recomend?

[eklikewhoa]

Re: begginer breeding advice?

Some plecos do and will eat eggs but for the most part I think if you stick with a mainly herbivore pleco you should be alright.

Have you thought about breeding livebearers? really easy to do.

[PhishPhreek]

Re: begginer breeding advice?

for information on what conditions your fish like & how to breed them, nothing beats surfing the net.

Fun and easy to breed are the mouth brooders.  Easy to identify when the female (For chiclids or male for Bettas) has a mouthfull of eggs / fry.   Just remove the parent to a fry tank untill the fry are released and move the parent back after.

Almost as easy are the livebearers.  The female get big and round before she releases the fry. Provide lots of cover for the fry and remove the female after she drops.

A joy to see is the parents that protect their nest (eggs and later fry). Love to see the little dark moving cloud.

Egg scaterers take the most work.  Seperate and condition males & females and when the females are heavy put them all the spawn tanks with the floating mops or layers of marbles to protect the droped eggs and after a few days remove the adults.

The hardest part about breeding is providing the triger conditions and having plenty of food for the fry.