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Brief history: When I first got into Endler's only males were available locally, I simply liked them and breeding didn't matter to me. After I did finally get some females and realized how prolific they are I decided to set up a breeding tank, thinking I could sell them online. There were also a few lfs interested in taking them for trade.

I got lazy though and never pursued selling them. I started to have problems with the fish...I wasn't getting males, fry were dying or growing out deformed. I assume it was due to overbreeding/inbreeding and the fact that I didn't cull.

About a month ago in an attempt to do something with the tank I culled all the fry I also moved the remaining 3 males to another tank to give the females a rest (there are 6). Since then there were no fry dropped. A couple of days ago I put the males back in and of course there is a lot of reuniting going on

I'm not sure what I want to do at this point though. I'm afraid that the next drops of fry will turn out the same. It looks like my options are leave the tank as is, see what happens with the future fry; purchase some new males to add and see how that affects the colony; change over to a community tank, adding ??? and letting nature take it's course with the fry.

The tank has a nice lawn of dwarf sag covering all but the front center; there is also a small cluster of planted anacharis. In addition to the Endler's there are 2 fat, healthy otos and a group of pygmy cories.

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There is water at the bottom of the ocean

A picture would be nice.

Get a few Amazonian Leaf Fish (I don't believe their too territorial and a few can can be kept in a 10 gallon)

They have a lot of personality and learn to recognize their owners (and will not respond to strangers). Also, they are pretty easy to hand tame.

It would be perfect since you are breeding guppies. You could just feed them the culls and not worry about buying dirty feeder fish.





Last edited by لعربية at 05-Aug-2005 12:49

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

This is the tank just before I moved the aponogeton:



Theresa_M attached this image:


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There is water at the bottom of the ocean

I think that if you added a few more males, then they would lessen the issue of inbreeding. Adding the new males would probably still not completly eliminate the issue but at least you would have another chance at having some healthy babies.

Removing the old males and replacing them is also another possibility that would probably work. I know this happend in my guppy colony tank and by replacing the males my fry were finally not coming out deformed and incapable.