5 gallon killifish breeding attempt

[Tacocat6]

Hey all, I’ve finally got rack space in my room which means it’s breeding project time! Last November I bought a pair of Chromaphyosemion killies labelled as volcanum killifish from an auction, and now it’s finally time to dedicate a breeding setup to them. (I’m actually not certain exactly what species they are because they don’t look like the pics online of C. volcanum, so a more educated id would be much appreciated)

Male


Female

They’ve been kept in my 20 long community tank and will return here once sufficient breeding occurs. They’re definitely breeding because I’ve found multiple decently sized babies in some of my scum buckets.


Here’s an image of the new setup. It’s only plants in there for now, and I’ll definetly add moss and twigs to provide cover. Substrate is a couple handfuls of netlea aqua soil which will leach ammonia for a little while, but I also seeded the tank with filter media from my main setup so cycling should not take too long.


Does anybody know if I should introduce them separately or at specific times of the day? There should be sufficient cover by then for the fish to hide, but I'm not aware of a golden ratio of foliage so that they don't get lost and never find each other.

Anyway please provide any input or feedback and thanks for reading!

 

[GaryE34 32]

They look like they could well be volcanum. When I bred them, (for close to 10 years) if I gave them a single species tank and fed them like there were fry in there, they produced well. I always had groups.

 

[Tacocat6]

Well crap:

At least there’s still no livestock and barely any hardscape in it so it shouldn’t be that bad to empty it. I do anticipate some significant pains with recaulking though because the part I think is leaking is in the separated filter section, which is trapped behind some plastic bits meaning my fingers are going to get all wedged up in there and that is not something I am looking forward to.

Oh well, such is fish keeping

 

[Tacocat6]

So here’s the temporary setup to mature the substrate and grow plants while the tank gets resealed:

I just lobbed everything into a bucket and strapped the light to the rack. In the meanwhile I’m going to feed this bucket with bacterAE and spirulina to hopefully explode the microorganism population so that the killies and future fry will be able to feast once they are added.

 

[Tacocat6]

Hello! It’s been a couple weeks and I still haven’t been able to get acetone, so I’ve been scheming in the meanwhile to try to get the fish breeding in one of my smaller buckets. These have been set up for the better half of the year, and just have a bunch of floaters, detritus, and a crap load of snails.


This should be fine for encouraging breeding right? I understand the bucket is a little small, but this is only temporary and just to get eggs going. I’ve already added a heater and a spawning mop and I would like to add the fish in tonight.

I’ll be feeding with micro worms and daphnia to get the breeding and I’ll otherwise leave them alone for a little while until I finally get that tank fixed.

 

[GaryE34 32]

If it is pond snails, they'll eat the eggs if there are any. Aggressively. Ramshorns won't.

 

[Tacocat6]

If it is pond snails, they'll eat the eggs if there are any. Aggressively. Ramshorns won't.

Thanks for the tip. I’m pretty sure it’s only ramshorns in there, but there might also be MTS that got in from the main tank.

 

[GaryE34 32]

The danger in the temporary buckets is that you'll lose one of the pair to aggression before you get fry. Containers are a form of russian roulette with killies, and if you keep pushing it...

Around here (New Brunswick) 5 to 10 gallon tanks are dirt cheap second hand. They go for 5 to 10 dollars in our club auctions, as a lot of people buy them and then realize they need to upgrade. I mean, Ontario - hop in the car for 16 hours each way and I'll give you one!

 

[Tacocat6]

The danger in the temporary buckets is that you'll lose one of the pair to aggression before you get fry. Containers are a form of russian roulette with killies, and if you keep pushing it...

Around here (New Brunswick) 5 to 10 gallon tanks are dirt cheap second hand. They go for 5 to 10 dollars in our club auctions, as a lot of people buy them and then realize they need to upgrade. I mean, Ontario - hop in the car for 16 hours each way and I'll give you one!

Ahhh I see. Yeah that could definitely be a problem, and I won’t be able to tell until it’s too late because I can barely see the fish from above (camouflage!). I already put them in last night but I’ll take them out later once I go home.

Alas, I am but a lowly car-less university student so no road trips in future, but there is an auction coming up next week that I want to go to so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for something good.