breeding fish in a selectively chosen community tank???

[Magnum Man]

this is the direction I’m trying to go, right now… both larger tanks, a 45 gallon, and a 65 gallon… trying a few different species mollys and sword fish for live bearers, and Florida Flag fish and bushy nose plecos for egg layers… with the live bearers being the main focus, and the egg layers be a possibility… one tank does have dwarf crays in it, which I’m sure could be a potential problem for egg scatters or non parental egg layers…

thoughts on conflicts with 2 different but similar live bearers in the same tank… I had some fry early on, and they are now an inch long… the only issue I see so far, is identification early on…

the plecos being parental, and a cave nester, I expect those eggs could be protected, though the mature male and female in that tank show no interest in each other…

I don’t know much about the flag fish breeding, but I have read that often cichlid type traits are associated with them during breeding…

anyone else regularly breed a fish in a mixed tank??? anyone with more than one breeding pair, in the same tank???

not trying to do this seriously at this point, just interested…

 

[TwoTankAmin]

You may get bn fry but they are seen as being on the lunch menu by many fish. LF BN were my very first plecos when I had only one tanks. They began to spawns and I did not realize this. One reason was I never saw any fry, they were being eaten. Then one day I did spot a fry,

At the time I was buying corys from a breeder out of Chicago. He did not do live plants while I have been doing so. He persuaded me to pull the next spawn to a species tank I would set-up for them and I persuaded him to try some live plants which I sent him. He also taught me that successful spawning should be done in a species tank.

It is possible for offspring to make it in a community type tank but this is normally the exception not the rule. I had common swordtails in my first tank and they spawned like crazy as livebearers will do. I was soon overrun and my response was to get my first angels to eat them. Before I did so, I had gotten my second tank to grow out the sword babies. The angels came soon after and I then rotated out of the common orange swords and began working with the Montezumae. Fortunately, they are voracious fry eaters.

So, I upped the number of plants to help protect the fry as the adults could not navigate the mass of plants with the same ease as the fry could use them to evade the adults. That was when I learned that what would eat the new fry was the only earlier surviving fry which as they got bigger were able to navigate the plants and to eat their smaller cousins.

A couple of years later when I got my first amano shrimp, I learned another thing. They will eat fry. I had apir of BN in a well planted tank and they would spawn. But I was not seeing fry like I expected as I had added some shrimp to the tank, Since BN do not eat their offspring the only thing left to do so were the amanos.

One trick to getting fry to survive in a community tanks is to choose the other fish from the vegetarian ranks rather than meat eaters or omnivores.

 

[Magnum Man]

I have been struggling with the sail fin mollys, and this last order ( 2 pairs ) were the best I have gotten… this morning there is one male wedged up side down under a sponge filter… I tried to free it, but it wouldn’t come out… I’m wondering if the other male chased it under there, and captured the other female??? these have been here a little over a week… the sword tails seem much easier…

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I would bet if you picked up the sponge filter and slowly raised until the bottom of it was out of the water by and inch or two that the fish will drop off at some point during the trip.