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i have had a family of comets, and commons in a tank now for about 3 years. they are about 5-7 inches. now how come after all of this time i haven't seem then try to breed?

What size tank? What are the water parameters? How many in a tank? Are you sure you have both sexes? They probably need to be in a pond.

umm. the tank is a 55G. i don't know what the sexes are.

BettaChris, you either don't have the right male/female combination, or they just don't right in that tank and are hoping for a pond. heidi

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

Definitely need to know how many. For example, I got 6 harlequin rasboras and ended up with only one female . It is said that 6 is required to ensure that there is at least one of either sex and I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't experienced it.

However, there is something you can try. Reduce your lighting to just 7-8 hours daily. Then after 10-days to 2 weeks, switch to 12 hours for a couple weeks.

My goldies responded to a photoperiod change. They came from a fish shop that had only 8 hours of lighting per day. Not long after they got into my 12 on/12 off tank they began to breed. It wasn't even spring - it was fall. I later read that changing the photo period is one way to spark breeding. Longer light period = longer days = spring/summer.

Last edited by Cory_Di at 22-Mar-2005 10:46

umm. these gold fish where resuced from my h.s from an experiment. so they aren't complaining.

I am glad that you were able to rescue them from hs. Many people who wouldn't dream of using a mammal in an experiment, don't think anything of experimenting on fish.

Some months back, I interviewed one of the Goldfish Society of America's top breeders for an article I was working on.

He told me the following:

First, to encourage goldfish to breed, you need plenty of plants and/or spawning mops in the tank -- at least half a dozen in a 30-gallon tank (his recommended minimum size.)

Second, he said, you need to condition the fish with a lot of live food. And he also suggested doing 20-percent water changes a day as part of the conditioning process.

He also said some goldfish enthusiasts say goldfish won't breed until they've overwintered -- that is, that they actually need a period of cold-weather dormancy. The GSA guy I interviewed said that obviously, that can't be true for all goldfish, since some do spontaneously breed in indoor tanks, and also in southern climates that never get very cold.

But he did say that if your goldfish won't breed and you're certain you have both males and females in an appropriate setup, a drop in temperature is often the key.

The problem, of course, is that if you have an indoor tank, there's no way to do this short of leaving all the windows open in the winter. However, if you do have a way to drop the temperature a few degrees overnight, then raise it again first thing in the morning, that can trigger spawning, according to this GSA breeder, who is also a club officer. He said he knows people who've simulated this by overwintering their fish in the garage or keeping them in the refrigerator for awhile (he did not recommend the latter!)

Lastly, he said, many goldfish won't breed until they're at least 18 months old. (You said yours were several years old, so obviously that's not the problem.)

Anyway, I should add that while I consider my GSA source to be highly reliable, I personally don't have any experience breeding goldfish indoors, although they do breed like crazy in my backyard pond without any interference on my part!

Laura - did he mention anything about changing the photoperiod. That's what triggered mine to breed (a sudden 4 hour increase in lighting). I've read other breeders talk about photo period changes triggering breeding. It mimics the short days going to long days, which in essence, is spring.

I don't remember whether he specifically mentioned that (I'll double-check my notes) but certainly during the course of my interviewing, a lot of other people said that adjusting the photo period could often trigger recalcitrant fish to spawn.

Basically, everybody's advice came down to this: every fish is an individual, and every tank (water chemistry etc.) is different, so you may have to experiment a bit to figure out what will trigger your fish to breed.

True, I suppose, but not exactly the one-size-fits-all answer we're all looking for ... Sigh!

IN my case, I figured it had to be photoperiod because I wasn't doing frequent water changes other than weekly and when I did, I matched the temp. I'll also admit, I think it was the change in food too. They were fed exclusively flake and probably every other day. When I got them, they started feasting on high quality goldfish pellets and freeze dried everything - blood worms, brine shrimp, daphnia, ocean plankton (all Hikari ). So, they got conditioned pretty well. I would say breeding began about a week or two after I got them, if I recall.

30-gallon tank (his recommended minimum size.)

After all the hoo-hah that goldies and tanks generate around here it is interesting to see the breeder say 30 gallon is minimum not the 55g.

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

I have the feeling he meant 30 gallons as a breeding tank, not a permanent setup.