Breeding Seasons?

[guppymonkey]

Do any livebearers have breeding seasons? Most of my species seem to breed basically continuously but a couple species seem to have taken breaks. I not sure if this is just from the stress of moving (I had to move my whole fish room!) or something else. I don't keep any common livebearers but my half beaks ( Nomorhamphus ebrardtii) and my Chapalichthys pardalis goodeids both seem to have stopped breeding. They don't even seem pregnant, which is extremely rare in my fish. They usually are almost always pregnant whether I want them to be or not!

 

[diburning]

I have no idea if they follow breeding seasons but from what I can tell you about my ameca splendens, fertilization doesn't happen until the male chases hte female until she is all washed out. Then when she gets tired, he fertilizes her.

 

[guppymonkey]

I wonder if my female Chapalichthys pardalis could be too young? Does anyone know how old any of the goodeids have to be to breed? I have some Xentoca eiseni and the baensch atlas says that they have to be 2 years old to breed but I know for sure that that is completely bogus information as my fry are about 6 to 8 months old and are already breeding.

 

[dwarfgourami]

A lot of the breeding information about livebearers in Baensch seems to be a bit dodgy- I'm asking for John Dawes' book for Christmas! Baensch also claims that poeciliopsis give birth to large batches all at once- I am sure they practise superfetation. And he says they are really hard to breed- yea, hard as nails those fish! I suppose if you are expecting a clutch of 30 fry and only two appear in your tank, you might take that as a bit of a failure. And fail to notice that another two appear next week....

Your thread has been bugging me for weeks, guppymonkey: I am SURE I have seen a reference to breeding seasons somewhere, in some livebearer, and I cannot for the life of me remember where.

 

[starrynightxxi]

i would guess that it's not so much seasons as certain environmental triggers. A tank is a controlled environment and may always be kept at ideal conditions for breeding for certain fish. Others require temperature, hardness, or alkalinity changes. In the wild, these things would probably depend on seasons - cories breed when the temperature drops, signalling the melting of snow and the beginning of the warm season - but in tanks the environment has to be altered by keepers and can probably be done pretty much whenever.

 

[guppymonkey]

I have wondered a lot about light. Some animals (and some species of fish but I can't recall at this time) are triggered to breed by the length of light. When spring comes the amount and strength of daylight changes and some animals pick up on this. I am not familiar enough with my livebearers (and its amazingly hard to find out obscure information like this) to know for sure what or if these kind of triggers exist. I am trying to experiment a little bit (without stressing the fish too much) but without sure signs of breeding behavior its tough to know if I am having any effect. I have noticed that my Xenotoca eiseni seem to mature at a much faster rate than my C. pardalis or my half beaks. My young X. eiseni are about an inch long and are already breeding but my C. pardalis are about 2 inchs long (and almost half a year older) and seem to just be starting their mating dances.

 

[nmonks]

On the whole, I think it's fair to say domesticated livebearer strains don't have any obvious breeding season. But with the wild caught fish (like halfbeaks) or the more unusual poecilids and goodeids, there may be other factors. Perhaps less "breeding seasons" and more the livebearer equivalent of spawning triggers. With halfbeaks, it's widely reported that after one or two batches females seem to lose their fertility. Perhaps it is a diet thing? If we're giving them insect larvae all the time, but they're actually vegetarian to some degree (as seems the case) then baybe they run out of essential nutrients? Or else, maybe there's a water chemistry issue. Certainly, Nomorhamphus liemi breeds more freely in soft/acid than hard/alkaline.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[helterskelter]

All goodied's come from mexico andthey are a cool water fish apart from Ataeniobius toweri what come from the warm sulpher's lakes which prefer temps of 80 oC
All the other species like to be in waters which average 70-75 oC

Keeping these fish in temps under 65oC dose tend to stop them breeding but slows them down. This is what i do over winter to give them a resting period. Thas is apart from Girardinichthys multiradiatus which prefer water under 65oC above that they will not do very well and may even kill them over long periods of time.

So these fish donr have a breeading season but over the cooler period they stop breeding.

Peociliades, again this is temerature controld rarther than photo period driven, as long as it warm their breed and again i like to give them a restering period where i drop the temps down to 70oC

As for the time for the fish to mature in goodiead's, this dose take a while, they sex out about about 6 months on average although some do sex out at around 6 weeks.

All the goodiea'ds need to be flock breed in number of min 4 fish
Very few will be happy to breed in number small that that.

Anything else?