Alistriwen
Fish Fanatic
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2007
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This is my first post on these forums, so I hope I've put this in the right place.
Background:
My roommate and I recently decided that as our summer project we would like to try breeding some fish. It is something I'd done when I was young for a few years breeding (don't laugh) guppies. Unfortunately, when I was about 13 two events (failure of our home's heating while we were on vacation during the winter caused two unheated tanks to perish and a subsequent move to a new house pretty much did in the rest.) and I shut everything down.
My roomie and I salvaged my old tanks (1x 10 gallong 2x 20 gallon and 1x 30 gallon) and decided we'd set up the 30 gallon first. We went to the local fish store and spoke to the manager who seemed to be a very knowledgeable guy. He breeds his own fish and had 50 tanks going at the height of his operation. We asked for reccomendations on fish that would be easy to breed for first timers, but that would provide more of a challenge than guppies. The mgr quickly reccomended what I now realize is the solution-to-everything-fish : Zebra Danios.
After a tenuous cycling process where we were victim to dye from our driftwood turning the water brown, we went back to the fish store to get our fish. We had mutually decided that the Danios were too small and drab for us, as we also partly want our tanks to be a colourful addition to our otherwise very... white.. living room lol. The manager reccomended as an alternative Rosy Barbs. He told us he'd got in a prize batch and that they were easy to breed, hardy fish. Based on the pictures I've seen on the net of other Rosy Barbs, these do look particularly nice, the males are a rich red even though they are clearly juvenile, and the females are nice, if somewhat more muted yellowish orange. He also reccomended that if we were serious, we ought to have 2 or 3 different types of fish to breed at once so that it would be easier to 'move' them a.k.a sell them back to him.
As a second choice he reccomended some stunning black swordtail platties. (I appologize I didn't use the scientific names, I forgot the one for Rosy Barbs and haven't been able to hunt down the black swordtail platties name anywhere.) They are a rich black with white tipped mouths and fins and a irridescent blue tinge when the light reflects off their scales. He said they were rare, and he'd only had them twice. We suspected that he pushed them on us knowing we wanted to breed and suspecting he'd be able to stock them again soon for certain if we bought some. Not a problem for us really, as selling/giving them away is going to be part of the fun no doubt.
Now to my questions which I hope some enlightened breeders / fish experts can answer.
We have 4 Rosy Barbs in our 30 gallon tank currently. Two male, two female. Is this an ideal breeding ratio ? We were told it was but I've read various different accounts on the web.
We are also trying to know if there are any specific behaviours that might indicate when a pair is ready to breed? We are pretty sure our barbs are at least a month away from breeding age since they are still quite small and the females quite thin, but when they do reach maturity we'd like to be able to move them to a spawning tank well ahead of spawning time to ensure we don't end up with random breeding in our community tank. We know the fish are avid egg eaters, and we want to raise as many as we can, not to mention we wanna watch the action so to speak lol!
Something else we're wondering about is for the rearing of the fry. The store mgr told us infusoria was the way to go for the first few days and then a healthy diet of brine shrimp hatchlings. This seems to be the going approach but we ran into a bit of a dilemna when we visited brineshrimpdirect which the store mgr reccomended for purchasing our brine shrimp. THere are too many varieties to choose from!! We narrowed it down to two choices, the Grade A brine shrimp and the decapsulated brine shrimp. What confused us was that the decapsulated brine shrimp cost less per lb than the grade A brine shrimp that you have to hatch. The decapsulated brine shrimp is apparently no longer viable because of the process it undergoes, but can apparently be fed as is to the fry and will be MORE nutritious than the hatched shrimp. They apparently also do not pose the risk of fry ingesting shells. What we don't understand is, if it's cheaper, more nutritious, easier and safer, why does everyone seem to use the hatched ones? We want to go with what is going to be best for our fry and not neccessarily what is cheap or easy.
Also, since putting the fish in the tank today, we observed a bit of odd behaviour. In the attached photos you can see that all the fish are huddled towards the one end of the tank. Initially, we thought it might be the presence of the heater that was drawing them, but the thermometre which is at the exact opposite end of the tank is reading exactly what we set the heater to and the heater is off so I dont think they are huddling around the warmth. Also, the barbs seem much more prone to this than the platties. The barbs are often even charging at or up and down that one side of the tank while the platties only hang out there sometimes. THe platties are more likely to swim around or over to the other end than are the barbs which almost exclusively hang out in the one corner. We wondered if there wasnt some reflection the fish were seeing or something that might be attracting them? Should we be worried?
Lastly, what do you think of our setup? It was done on a college student's budget mind you, but we tried lol. Right now it is just our community tank which we will raise fry in when they are large enough to avoid being eaten, but we also may want to use it for birthing at some point down the road and tried to create some hiding places with rocks and logs for that purpose. We also have some fast growing moss which we are begining to propogate for use in all our tanks.
So, any help with the questions or any general tips/comments are very welcome and appreciated. Also, if you are a hobbyist in Southern Ontario, Canada we are trying to network with the community and find potential trading partners for advice, fish etc.
Looking forward to your replies!
Thanks!
Picture 1
Picture 2
Background:
My roommate and I recently decided that as our summer project we would like to try breeding some fish. It is something I'd done when I was young for a few years breeding (don't laugh) guppies. Unfortunately, when I was about 13 two events (failure of our home's heating while we were on vacation during the winter caused two unheated tanks to perish and a subsequent move to a new house pretty much did in the rest.) and I shut everything down.
My roomie and I salvaged my old tanks (1x 10 gallong 2x 20 gallon and 1x 30 gallon) and decided we'd set up the 30 gallon first. We went to the local fish store and spoke to the manager who seemed to be a very knowledgeable guy. He breeds his own fish and had 50 tanks going at the height of his operation. We asked for reccomendations on fish that would be easy to breed for first timers, but that would provide more of a challenge than guppies. The mgr quickly reccomended what I now realize is the solution-to-everything-fish : Zebra Danios.
After a tenuous cycling process where we were victim to dye from our driftwood turning the water brown, we went back to the fish store to get our fish. We had mutually decided that the Danios were too small and drab for us, as we also partly want our tanks to be a colourful addition to our otherwise very... white.. living room lol. The manager reccomended as an alternative Rosy Barbs. He told us he'd got in a prize batch and that they were easy to breed, hardy fish. Based on the pictures I've seen on the net of other Rosy Barbs, these do look particularly nice, the males are a rich red even though they are clearly juvenile, and the females are nice, if somewhat more muted yellowish orange. He also reccomended that if we were serious, we ought to have 2 or 3 different types of fish to breed at once so that it would be easier to 'move' them a.k.a sell them back to him.
As a second choice he reccomended some stunning black swordtail platties. (I appologize I didn't use the scientific names, I forgot the one for Rosy Barbs and haven't been able to hunt down the black swordtail platties name anywhere.) They are a rich black with white tipped mouths and fins and a irridescent blue tinge when the light reflects off their scales. He said they were rare, and he'd only had them twice. We suspected that he pushed them on us knowing we wanted to breed and suspecting he'd be able to stock them again soon for certain if we bought some. Not a problem for us really, as selling/giving them away is going to be part of the fun no doubt. Now to my questions which I hope some enlightened breeders / fish experts can answer.
We have 4 Rosy Barbs in our 30 gallon tank currently. Two male, two female. Is this an ideal breeding ratio ? We were told it was but I've read various different accounts on the web.
We are also trying to know if there are any specific behaviours that might indicate when a pair is ready to breed? We are pretty sure our barbs are at least a month away from breeding age since they are still quite small and the females quite thin, but when they do reach maturity we'd like to be able to move them to a spawning tank well ahead of spawning time to ensure we don't end up with random breeding in our community tank. We know the fish are avid egg eaters, and we want to raise as many as we can, not to mention we wanna watch the action so to speak lol!
Something else we're wondering about is for the rearing of the fry. The store mgr told us infusoria was the way to go for the first few days and then a healthy diet of brine shrimp hatchlings. This seems to be the going approach but we ran into a bit of a dilemna when we visited brineshrimpdirect which the store mgr reccomended for purchasing our brine shrimp. THere are too many varieties to choose from!! We narrowed it down to two choices, the Grade A brine shrimp and the decapsulated brine shrimp. What confused us was that the decapsulated brine shrimp cost less per lb than the grade A brine shrimp that you have to hatch. The decapsulated brine shrimp is apparently no longer viable because of the process it undergoes, but can apparently be fed as is to the fry and will be MORE nutritious than the hatched shrimp. They apparently also do not pose the risk of fry ingesting shells. What we don't understand is, if it's cheaper, more nutritious, easier and safer, why does everyone seem to use the hatched ones? We want to go with what is going to be best for our fry and not neccessarily what is cheap or easy.
Also, since putting the fish in the tank today, we observed a bit of odd behaviour. In the attached photos you can see that all the fish are huddled towards the one end of the tank. Initially, we thought it might be the presence of the heater that was drawing them, but the thermometre which is at the exact opposite end of the tank is reading exactly what we set the heater to and the heater is off so I dont think they are huddling around the warmth. Also, the barbs seem much more prone to this than the platties. The barbs are often even charging at or up and down that one side of the tank while the platties only hang out there sometimes. THe platties are more likely to swim around or over to the other end than are the barbs which almost exclusively hang out in the one corner. We wondered if there wasnt some reflection the fish were seeing or something that might be attracting them? Should we be worried?
Lastly, what do you think of our setup?
It was done on a college student's budget mind you, but we tried lol. Right now it is just our community tank which we will raise fry in when they are large enough to avoid being eaten, but we also may want to use it for birthing at some point down the road and tried to create some hiding places with rocks and logs for that purpose. We also have some fast growing moss which we are begining to propogate for use in all our tanks. So, any help with the questions or any general tips/comments are very welcome and appreciated. Also, if you are a hobbyist in Southern Ontario, Canada we are trying to network with the community and find potential trading partners for advice, fish etc.
Looking forward to your replies!
Thanks!
Picture 1
Picture 2
