ok... so you are breeding... how much do you landscape breeder or holding tanks???

[Magnum Man]

I would assume the general consensus is to landscape the breeder tanks, but it seems painful to remove fish, out of landscaped tanks... if you have holding tanks, are those generally pretty plain? but unless you are doing egg layers that deposited on a mop, or other easily removable structure removing baby fish must be pretty challenging??

heard talks about no substrate tanks... I'm not a fan, but if the fish are ok with it, it likely makes removing scattered eggs or fry easier???

 

[GaryE]

I do it differently by species. My dwarf cichlids dig as part of their nesting, so I like to watch that. They also need complex decors to lead their young to, and to control their territoriality and sheer aggression.
Plant spawning killies don't care about the substrate.
Egg scatterers get bare bottomed tanks with fake, egg hiding structures. Scatterers are usually egg eaters. But adhesive egg producers need something for eggs to adhere to. And some will spawn in a substrate.

 

[emeraldking]

I don't really scape my breeding tanks. They should be functional. But I do envy how other people can scape their tanks beautifully...

 

[Innesfan]

Most of my planned breeding, Nannostomus and Killies, are in colony breeding tanks that are thickly planted to provide spawning sites and refuge for fry.

 

[Magnum Man]

so, to catch babies, requires unscaping???

 

[GaryE]

Sometimes, for me. Or, ideally, I leave babies and catch adults. That can be waiting for them to grow, or removing the breeders to their next tank. With my Parananochromis and their odd fry behaviour, it's easier to move the parents.

 

[Innesfan]

so, to catch babies, requires unscaping???

I generally don't catch babies. If the colony gets too large, I net out some adults. The latter situation occurs more for killies than Nannostomus.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I mostly bred plecos. When I started with zebras the tank was bare bottom which worked fin. However, as I expanded to more species, I used a sand bottom.

I wok with groups from 6 to 15 fish mostly. Plecos need caves and they need to hide. The females do not claim caves but may hide in them or under rock and wood. So my breeding tanks were heavily scaped. Since the offspring tend to grow faster in the breeder tanks they were left there until they had to be moved,

When the time to remove fish came I had to completely remove everything from the tank. Often I had to raise heaters as the fish wanted to hide anyway they could. Filter intakes were often removed as were the Poret cubefilters etc.

Over the years I had to break a few caves apart to get out stubborn males who would sprad their fectoral fins making them ompossible to pull out without cause serious damage.

In some cases I would pull a cave with dad and not yet free swimming offspring to a grow tank. When I did this, after the dad booted the kids, I would leave him in the grow tank and let him eat for a week. Then I would nab him in the cave and return it to the breeder tank.

Over the year I had a few cory spawns and I always pulled the eggs from wherever the fish put them and allowed them to hatch in a smaller bare bottom tank. I did the same with the few angel spawns I got but they laid close to 500 eggs and I could not hhandle that many every few weeks and switched to Altums which did not spawn for me.

As noted by GaryE, the hows and whys of breeding layputs are usually species dependent.