Tank setup

[Wills]

None of the fish need high flow, you do get some rheophillic cichlids like Retroculus and Rheoheros species but yours are good in slow to moderate flow.

Whats your filters turn over rate? You want to be between 6 and 10 times turn over, I'd aim for between 8 and 10 though.

Wills

 

[Rick147]

I’ve just noticed over the last 24 hours some small hair like stuff sticking to the glass?

 

[AmyKieran]

That looks like oxygen bubbles, have you tried giving them a scrape?

 

[Essjay]

Or algae. Just scrape it off or use a sponge - one that's never been used for anything else and doesn't have detergent etc in it.

 

[Colin_T]

What species of rainbowfish did you get?
You can keep around 12 adult rainbowfish that grow to about 4 inches long in a 3 foot tank.

Rainbowfish need plant matter in their diet and suffer health issues if they don't get plant matter in their diet. At least half their diet should be plant based and you can use vege flakes, spirulina flakes, goldfish food, and aquarium plants. You can also offer them cooked pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, etc.

Duckweed is a small floating plant and most of the bigger rainbowfish will eat that.

Have lots of live plants along the back and sides of the tank but leave the middle open for them to swim and show of fin.

Have the lights on for up to 16 hours a day and let algae grow on the back glass and ornaments. The fish will pick at that if there is no other plant matter.

You can put some smooth rocks n a bucket of water outside in the sun and let them get covered in algae. Then put the rocks in the tank and let the fish eat the algae. Then put the rocks back out in the bucket to grow more algae. If you have a few rocks you can put one in the tank while the other grows algae, then swap them over.

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Keep the feeding down to 2-3 times week until the filter has cycled.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate any day you have an ammonia or nitrite reading above 0ppm, or a nitrate reading above 20ppm.

Have coverglass on the tank to stop the fish jumping out.

Rainbowfish show better colours when they have a dark substrate, dark background and floating plants.

The following link has all the known rainbowfish from Australia and New Guinea. It might interest you.

Melanotaeniidae and Pseudomugilidae

A website dedicated to Rainbowfishes of Australia and New Guinea

rainbowfish.angfaqld.org.au

 

[Rick147]

I wanted to be prepared for when/if these breed (6 blue eye and 6 rainbow)

I don’t want to have to return any fish and will have a second tank running shortly.

Do you removed the breeding pair or do you leave them and remove the other fish?

Or wait it out and see if there is any problems?

 

[Essjay]

Can you clarify please.
Rainbows - do you mean rainbowfish or rainbow cichlids?
Blue eyes - do you mean the small rainbowfish or different type of fish?

 

[Rick147]

When I purchased
I was told rainbow cichlids and blue eye cichlids

I’m still learning cichlids so this is as far as I know.
I can tell you 6 have red/orange eyes or around their eyes and 6 have blue

They are all still very small atm

 

[Colin_T]

Normally rainbowfish are bred in a single species tank because most of them can hybridise and produce fertile hybrid offspring. These are not wanted by the hobby because fish can resemble the parents but produce offspring that don't.

If you have a Melanotaenia species and a Pseudomugil species in the same tank, they are unlikely to hybridise. However, most blue eyes (Pseudomugils won't eat their eggs or young, but a lot of Melanotaenia species will eat their young. So breeding is best done in a single species tank where you add the parents and leave them for a week. Then move the adults out and rear up the fry in the breeding tank.

You can breed them in pairs (1 male & 1 female) or in colonies. Pairs give you less genetic variation but more eggs survive. If you want to breed them in colonies, have 4 or 5 prs in the tank together. Feed them well and remove them after a few days to a week. You will need a bigger tank for colony breeding vs prs.

The following link has information about breeding fish and culturing food for the babies.

Back to Basics when Breeding Fish

STARTING OUT Make sure you have a pair, (1 male + 1 female). There is nothing worse than spending your hard-earned dollars buying a couple of fish to try and breed and ending up with a pair of fish of the same sex. Let's face it, to reproduce fish you need a male and a female. Two males won't do...

www.fishforums.net

If you can post pictures of the fish, I might be able to identify them, if you don't already know what species they are.

Disregard this is you have cichlids.

 

[Rick147]

 

[Colin_T]

A bunch of cichlids. That's gonna be fun when they mature

 

[Rick147]

A bunch of cichlids. That's gonna be fun when they mature

So people just keep 1 cichlid? In a tank

 

[Colin_T]

With Central/ South American cichlids, I usually keep 1pr per tank for breeding purposes.
With mouth brooding cichlids I will have 1 male and a couple of females.

If you have a big enough tank you can have a couple of prs and other fish (that aren't cichlids) swimming around.

If you want a breeding pr, the best thing to do is buy a group of young fish (like you have done) and let them grow up together, when they form prs, move the prs into their own tank for breeding.

The big problem with adult cichlids is they have territories and will defend those territories from other fish, especially other cichlids. If all your fish decide to pr up and start breeding, there won't be enough room for each pr to have a territory and they will fight and kill each other. The species you have are not really aggressive but they will still fight for territories when mature and breeding.

I would leave them as they are and when they start forming prs, either keep the pr in the tank and get rid of the rest, or move the pr into their own tank, or a tank without any other cichlids or bottom dwellers (catfish, loaches, eels, etc).

 

[itiwhetu]

Cichlids tend to sort themselves out like a herd of lions or any other animal with a hierarchy.

 

[Rick147]

With Central/ South American cichlids, I usually keep 1pr per tank for breeding purposes.
With mouth brooding cichlids I will have 1 male and a couple of females.

If you have a big enough tank you can have a couple of prs and other fish (that aren't cichlids) swimming around.

If you want a breeding pr, the best thing to do is buy a group of young fish (like you have done) and let them grow up together, when they form prs, move the prs into their own tank for breeding.

The big problem with adult cichlids is they have territories and will defend those territories from other fish, especially other cichlids. If all your fish decide to pr up and start breeding, there won't be enough room for each pr to have a territory and they will fight and kill each other. The species you have are not really aggressive but they will still fight for territories when mature and breeding.

I would leave them as they are and when they start forming prs, either keep the pr in the tank and get rid of the rest, or move the pr into their own tank, or a tank without any other cichlids or bottom dwellers (catfish, loaches, eels, etc).

Not trying to sound stupid. But why do other people or nearly everyone I've seen, have like 20,30, 40 or more in 1 tank??
Take tank size out of the equation for now.