Best breeding stratagey

[shift]

There is a few threads on here about breeding strategies, most of them are a few years old.

I'm curious what has been the most successful strategy for everyone?

My first attempt was putting 2M/3F in a 5.5g planted tank for a few weeks. removed the parents and ended up with about 15 ish fry.
My second attempt was using a mesh bottom with some random plants and a breeding mop. I left the adults in for about a week and a half then removed them just before I went out of town. Its been alost a week and no fry yet.. so i'm going to wait another 5 days or so before i try again in that tank.

Over the past few years of trial and error.. what have you guys found to be the best stagey?

[Piotr K.]

Well, the fish don't evolve so fast that data which are few years old are not relevant anymore Anyway, at the moment I have 18 tanks (6 aquariums, 12 plastic containers) with various combinations of F/M ratio, substrate (fine sand, fine gravel, somewhat coarse gravel) and spawning media (moss and mops), to test what works good and what works less effective. Will let you guys know

[shift]

Awesome! keep me posted. Ill let you know how my up-coming experiments go aswell.

[Piotr K.]

First of all, do some more runs of the same setup. There are many possibilities to get the outcome "no fry" - 1. The females are not producing eggs 2. The males are not good, so the eggs are not fertilized 3. The eggs were eaten by the parents or by other fish. 4. The fry was eaten by adult fish 5. The eggs were fertilized and developing, but died at some point because of, say, lack of oxygen in the spawning mop... etc etc etc. Only after doing several runs of the same setup you will be able to tell something about the real number of fries you can get. Running just once, and then changing something, makes impossible to tell if the outcome is "true", or if it was just a result of pure chance. This is why I set up so many tanks, and I will be testing at least two times, if not more. Only such approach allows to separate the reality from the chance (especially in case of these little bastards )

[BallAquatics]

I have used this set-up for the past 4 or 5 years now with great success.....

5.5 US gallon tank with course black substrate and a large portion of live moss. A small sponge filter set at a very slow bubble, not much water movement. 3 female fish and 1 male in the tank for 5 to 7 days. Breeders are moved directly into another breeder set-up when removed. Within 2 weeks of removing breeders fry are present. Very simple but effective set-up.

This is the same set-up I sent to Frank Reece on the Blue Zoo.

Dennis

[Piotr K.]

Dennis, what do you do with the fry after removing the parents? I mean, do you keep the fry in the tank, feeding them and waiting till they grow to ready-to-sell size, or you remove the fry to another tank?

Keeping fry in the breeder has one advantage - one doesn't disturb the fry, and two disadvantages - the breeding tank is blocked as long as the fry is there (=you can't breed adults again as long as the fry is there), and the volume is a little bit small for raising the fry to the ready-to-sell size (the bigger the tank the faster the fish grow, and the more stable are the conditions). The trade-off would be to wait for the fry grows a bit (say, 3-4 weeks), and then transfer them to a larger "grower" tank (still, the breeder is blocked for 4-6 weeks [1-2 weeks to complete hatching + 3-4 weeks for growing]).

Removing the fry has one advantage - removing the fry frees the breeder tank, so one can breed adults again there, and three disadvantages - removing tiny fry will take a lot of time if using plastic cup or "glass fry catcher", netting them (which is definitely faster) might hurt them, and putting them to a larger tank with different conditions might also be stressful for them. But - one is able to collect dozens or even hudreds of fry in one large tank, which makes caring for them a lot easier.

I was also thinking about transfering the tiny fry to smaller tanks, like 1 US gallon, cuz it's easy to fill such tank with the water from the breeder tank, and it's easier to feed the fry during first days (high concentration of food in the water, the fry doesn't need to look for the food - important for microworms, for example). After a week or two, when the fry reaches artemia-ready size, I'd transfer them to a larger "grower". At the moment I'm not sure which will work best, so I'll test everything

Another great way is to use egg traps - parents stay in one and the same tank, happy and undisturbed, and what is transferred is the eggs, which are not so sensitive as the tiny fry. Disadvantage - one is never certain if 100% of eggs were laid in the trap. This is why I want to test what the fry number will be when removing the parents from the breeder (100% of eggs are laid in the breeder, that is sure like taxes ), and compare it to the number of fry obtained when using the egg trap. Work in progress (I'm aiming for getting about a thousand of fish per month, this is why the differences begin to be important).

Dennis, did you notice any changes in the eggs/fry number as the parents become older? And what's your average fry number in the setup 5,5 US gallon with 1m+3f?

Best,

Piotr K.

[shift]

Well the parrents have been removed from the mesh bottom/mop experiment for a little over a week. saturday i spotted 3 fry, today i'm up to about 5... so it didnt work nearly as well as i hoped.

I build an egg trap version of the mop and placed it into the shrimp tank with 2f/2m in it.. to see what happens


Dennis - Do you find it more effective to move the parents rather than the eggs? I have started to think it would stress them out and delay breeding

Piotr K. - 1000/month! damn you must have one big grow out tank! I recently picked up a 17Gallon tub for 8$ that i am currently using as a reservoir for water changes, but was thinkign that it could make a good fry/grow out pond if i ever run out of tank space.

[Piotr K.]

[shift]

Main tank - 12 CPD's (minus the ones working on breeding), 4 neons, nerite snail and 8-10 shrimp



And the breeding tests...

First attempt - yield 15-19 fry
Left parents (3f/2m) in a 5.5g planted tank for about 2 weeks


Second attempt. - only 5 fry so far (maybe more i havent seen as the tank is full of random plants floating around at the moment.


Current not so pretty state as i wait to see if any more fry hatch before i vacume the muck off the bottom and add some nice subtrate for a fry/shrimp baby grow out tank.



Eggtrap i made last night for the next attempt. its in a tank with a few shrimp and 2f/2m.. i wanted 3f but i gave up trying to catch them in my planted 12g edge tank


i'm curious to see how this one turns out.. hopefully they go for it and do the mating dance!


Do you guys have photos of your setups?

[Piotr K.]

Hey, the first layout is amazing! Is it Fluval Edge? Are the plants growing so nice under such weak light? Wow!

As for the setup for the first attempt - it must have been a struggle to catch the adults in such densely planted aquarium...

As for the setup for the second attempt: 1. The mesh size (the "eyes" of the mesh) is too small IMHO, it should be about 3-4 mm (not bigger, because adults, when scared, can easily get stuck in it) 2. I'm not surprised that the number of fry was smaller. You know why? Because the mop is a hanging one, so the spawning looked like this - the fish spawned in the mop, the egg fell down OUTSIDE the mop, and landed on the mesh; it didn't go through the mesh, because the "eyes" are too small, so adults ate almost all the eggs (that's what I think). Generally, CPDs breed in plants/mops, but the eggs are not adhesive and fall down - therefore the best mop is a mop which is laying on the bottom, not a hanging one.

The picture of the mop, bare bottom and a rock on the left side - the same situation, mop is hanging, and it doesn't even touch the bottom. So, every egg which is laid within the mop will fall down, right onto the glass, where it will be easily found and eaten by the adults. Mops must lay on the bottom, or at least touch the bottom when hanging.

Egg trap - think like a fish: if given a choice between spawning within all the plants, and spawning in an artificial "grass" made of wool, what would you choose? Egg traps don't make any sense if you have other plants in the tank, cuz CPDs will breed in the plants, not over the trap. Second problem - the "eyes" of the mesh are IMHO too small, so no egg will fall through them. Eggs of CPDs are pretty big for such a small fish, about the size of the eye of CPD.

I'll post some pics tomorrow, as the lights over my tanks are off now (it's 10:15PM here in Poland )

[BallAquatics]

[Piotr K.]

[Piotr K.]

[BallAquatics]

[Piotr K.]