Cherry Barb Mating Behavior?

[KRamgren89]

so yesterday and today i noticed my cherry barbs acting silly. currently we have a group of 6 that is 1 male to 5 females the LFS only had 1 male when we bought them.

but as i said yesterday our male was almost playing ring around the rosie with one of our little females. they were swaying through the plants and rubbing against each other. is this a mating behavior? if so i know nothing about eggs and ect!

 

[Biulu]

yes, sounds like mating to me! What else do you have in the tank? Cherries are egg scatterers, they put eggs everywhere to up their chances some will survive. The best thing you can do is to take out the 2 lovers into a separate tank and let them mate there. Add lots of java moss and you should be fine. The fry will feed off the infusoria in the java moss and after a while you can add very finely crushed flake.

 

[KRamgren89]

omgosh! i dont have a second tank i'll have to get ahold of my LFS and see if i can get some java moss to add into my big tank. currently have 6 cherry barbs, 6 rummynose tetra, 1 sterbai cory to be rehomed, 4 bronze cory, 1 upsidedown catfish to be rehomed, and 5 angelfish 2 of which will be going to the owner of my local LFS once my tank gets over whatever crappy sickness is going on. thinking its the angels i have to worry about.

 

[Man of fish]

Yes sounds like it. I've got a mated pair of cherries, that do this all the time. Ive had them for about 3 or 4 months but no eggs. Now that I moved them to my big tank though I've seen them do it 5+ times in the 2 weeks vs 1 time in 3 months in a 10 gallon. They seem much happier in the 30 gallon and the female is getting fatter

 

[Biulu]

It is not ideal, but instead of a tank you can also buy a plastic tub. I have a 40 litre plastic tub (with lid) in which I place fish temporary. It does have a filter but no heating. You could use this for breeding. In the case of the cherry barbs I would then put a grid on the bottom (old UGF filters are great for this) so once the eggs are fertilised they fill fall through and the fish cannot eat them. This is one of the best ways to optimise fry yield.