Reproduction in Tanks

[TwoTankAmin]

For a good part of my years keeping fish I had no interest in shrimp except as a food for my fish. But I also became a friend of Rachel O'Leary, aka msjinkzd, in those years. Eventually she won me over and I bought a bag of the red Neocaridina davidi. These went in to planted 5.5 gal tank. Over the year the small fish I would have in the tank would pass on and I would replaced them with another species. After about 15 year and some time of having no fish in it I decided i could take it down. It was 6 feet up a wall on a shelf I had installed just for it.

So I went up the ladder I needed for working in it ready to put the contents into a bucket when I discovered it was filled with shrimp. The tank is still up there today and overstocked with the little guys.

Over the years I was lucky to have a number of the rare B&W Hypamcistrus plecos from the Rio Xingu spawn in my tanks. among other species. What I have come to believe is that we do not spawn out firsh, They do all the work and they do this because they want to do so.. Our job on all of this is not to do things which will work to prevent them from succeeding. If we give them the right environment, if we feed them the right food and maintain their tank, the odds are decent they will spawn/

Now, back to shrimp. Those red cherries above were apparently in a set-up conducive to their reproducing for almost 20 years now. As long as I had a few fish many of the potential new shrimp were lunch, until the past 18 months. Today I am thinking I need to pull out and sell or trade a lot of shrimp. I did nothing beyond weekly, water changes, an occasional rinsing of the filter media and feeding a proper diet. Of course I always add needed ferts and Flourish Excel after refilling my tanks with plants.

About 5 or 6 years a ago a customer turned fish friend on the left Coast (i.e. California) said work and family issues meant she had to shut down a few tanks and she needed somebody to take some fish and shrimp who she knew would give them proper care. I am on the right coast (New York a bit NNE of NYC). I volunteered and among the things I received were about 10-12 neo. davidi, blue dream variety. These went in to my 15 gal. jungle tank. It has never held many fish and today it holds around 7 or 8 pond raised white clouds, one juvie albino bn and too many assassin snails. I did nothing special for the tank beyond my normal maint., water changes, feeding and feritlizing. In the next sic months I bought 6 more of the blue neos at one of club's regular meeting auctions.

Since then I have sold well over 100 of the blue shrimp and a similar number of assassin snails. A few months back I decided to see what would happen if I removed some of the adult blue shrimp from the 15 gal. and dropped them into the planted 29 I set up to Q some new fish months ago. I also had so many assassins in other tanks that I added about a dozen of them to the 29 as well. Since then I have truly ignored that tank. I do the weekly water change and often the media doesn't need rinsing. I do rinse the pre-filter in the intake. And I feed the tank a bit for the shrimp and snails. But there is algae on some of the plants.

I do check every week to see if the shrimp are reproducing. Last week I spotted a few teeny blue shrimp. Today I spotted a whole bunch of teeny blue shrimp.

I guess I did not do anything to prevent them from spawning. There are also more assassins in there than I remember dropping in.

Over the last 25 years I have had quite a few fish spawn as as well as the shrimp and snails. Most did it all without my intentional input intended to trigger spawns. The first unexpected spawn were my panda corys. I do not count the swordtails which were among my very first fish. My best guess is I likely have had 20+ species reproduce in my tanks over the years. Many, but not all, resulted in viable fry. But, many eggs usually got eaten as did new fry in community tanks.

I am still amazed that things spawn simply because I basically did nothing that would discourage or prevent that as opposed to trying to do things that would induce spawning.

 

[GaryE]

I hear breeders talk about 'planned breeding" and "accidental breeding". The first is supposed to be superior skills-wise to the second, but to me the line is really blurry. In order for any baby fish to grow in your tank, you have to have done something right. I don't count buying a gravid platy or guppy and having her drop fry - unless you manage to raise those fry to adulthood. But if you've set up a tank with the needs of the fish in mind, whether they'll breed or not, you've worked at something. And if the result is young you can raise, claim credit if only to yourself.

I used to earn money I needed from breeding not well known fish, then selling articles on how it was done. So my incentive to breed fish, raise them and then trade off the adults and try another species was pretty high. Now I can slow down and keep fish I like for several generations or beyond. It's enjoyable not to be chasing novelties all the time. Spawning and raising a fish for the 4th generation can be harder than getting them to spawn once, and you learn so much more doing it.

Since I like raising fry and watching the growth process, I try to always have at least one tank of fry going, and often have 2 or 3. Today, I have 3 going - a killie, a tetra and a dwarf Cichlid.

Breeding fish takes you a step beyond just looking at what you buy. You have to figure it out. Since I believe this hobby should be about learning about nature, it's a good step to takes if you have space, time and resources.

 

[anewbie]

My a. sp ipiranga bred !!!!! I gave them lots of water and said have fun .... it took about 12 months after reaching adult size.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I did the happy fish dance very early on. it was when my swordtails made babies. When I set up my first tank I felt that I never needed or cared about having my fish spawn. However, I also felt that when one bought fish the right thing to do was to have both sexes. But this was because i felt they would be happier this way and not because I wanted them to reproduce. Having my second tank be one for growing out the sword babies changed my attitude. What changed my mind was not the baby swords as much as the fact that in my second tank I set up to grow them I transferred some of the live plants from my initial tank. I was doing a fishless cycle in that tank and one evening I went to add some ammonia I spotted a tiny fry in the floating plants. I turned out to be one of several zebra danios born there. APparently zebra eggs got transferred on some of the plants.

This changed my attitude on having my fish reproduce. Five years later I was given the opportunity to buy a proven breeding colony of zebra placos. I had kept the species before but never got spawns. I had to break into my IRA to afford to buy them and i was scared that I was going to have them fail to reproduce and to die, but I plunged into it. It turns out it was one of the smartest things I did. I got my first spawn in under 3 weeks of their arriving in my tank. It was the start of of an adventure that is now almost wound down.

Those zebras paid for themselves in the next 18 months. Then they paid me back for every dollar I ha spent on all of my fish and equipment and costs. Then they paid for the next pleco species I added. In the end my hobby has cost me nothing out of pocket, it has paid for itself. I was also very lucky to have well water that seems to have a lot of properties similar to the waters of the Amazon and its tributaries. More basically it seems to be conducive to having softer water fish spawn in it.

I have been very lucky. Every single species of pleco I have kept has spawned in my tanks. All I had to do was to change water, clean filter media and feed a proper diet. As long as I could give them the proper conditions, they did all the rest. What I avoided was doing things that would work against their spawning.

There was one advantage to having started with tanks so late in life. Money was not as much of an issue as it would have been had I started with fish much earlier in life. I also have to admit that is was dumb luck that I was given the chance to buy the zebra group that started it all. I knew the right person and lived under an hour from the person who had to sell the zebras. Pick-up was mandatory as well as being able to spend $3,500 to buy the zebras. I also needed to have my retirement account to fund the purchase.

Had all the factors needed to get those zebras had to happen together to make it possible. A lot of it was the luck of the draw, so to speak. I wavered initially about deciding to take the chance before I finally plunged into it. I cannot imagine how things might have gone had I not done so.

 

[anewbie]

My rams bred but they aren't quite sure what to do with the eggs when they start wriggling !