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General Fish breeding:

Fish breeding is, in most cases a fairly simple process. All you have to do is recreate the natural event(s) that trigger spawning behavior in the wild. There are a few triggers that can be easily recreated in the home aquarium. In this article I will explain the key points to the whole process.

Fish in the home aquarium will only breed if they feel comfortable and secure in the environment in which they are being kept, as well as having quality food, water, and breeding sites available to them. It is hopeless putting a group of tetras in water with a high pH and GH and then wondering why it isnt spawning. Therefore, if an aquarium is foul, the fish will not be happy and will not spawn. Also, fry are more sensitive to elements of basic water quality than adults (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, etc.).

Food is also an important factor in conditioning fish to breed. If there is not enough food around to feed the fry, or not enough food around to support the current population, there is no point in making more mouths to feed (though remember that fry should be housed in a separate tank to avoid starving, getting eaten, by larger fish, or getting caught in filters in a community tank).

In the home aquarium, providing the [parent] fish with lots of live food, in the way of mosquito larvae, brine shrimp, feeder fish, etc. will make them more willing to breed. If there is no where for the fish to lay the eggs, (eg. No shell for shell dwellers, no smooth surface for other cichlids, no floating plants or objects for a betta to build a bubble nest) the fish just won't spawn. They dont need to spawn. It is up to you to provide a number of suitable spawning locations for the fish.

Ok, now for triggers. In the wild fish are triggered into spawning by certain environmental factors. For example; more or better quality food, a rise or fall in water level triggered either by melting snow or tides, and changing temperature are factors that will induce spawning in many species of fish.

All of these factors are easily replicated in the home aquarium. More or better quality food is an easy one. Rather then feeding flakes or pellets every day and a weekly treat of bloodworms, feeder fish, mosquito larvae, etc. Feed these (the latter) foods 3 or 4 times a week. This will convince the fish there is a change coming and that now is the time to spawn.

A rise or fall in water level is also and easy, fairly self-explanatory one. While doing your water changes add less water to the aquarium then you took out. This will leave you with a gradually receding water line. To do the opposite, do a water change, and add the new water over a period of a week or so.

Temperature can be an easy one to replicate in theory, but in practice, if done too dramatically, it can result in ick and other stress related diseases. Every day until you get to the desired temperature, change the temperature on your heater's thermostat up or down a degree to allow a more gradual change.

Overall, the key things to remember while conditioning fish to breed are simple; quality water, quality food, and environment. Follow these guidelines, depending on the species you are breeding specifically, and you will be successful in breeding.


-Matt


[span class="edited"][Edited by Little Caesar 2004-03-22 20:50][/span]

[span class="edited"][Edited by Little Caesar 2004-03-23 15:19][/span]

Excellent article there Matt

but just one point

In the wild fish are triggered into spewing

spell checkers fixed it

Hey Matt,

I hope you don't mind, but I went through and edited your article. I also added some and took out some.

I am going to make it an announcement in this forum, so I wanted to just go through and cut out any mistakes I found since many people will read it as an announcement and I want it to be easy to understand.

I think that this article is great. So many people have failures at breeding based on a failure to follow one ore more of the guidelines you mentioned. I think that this article is a good general outline of what to do for most species.

Again, great job.....and I hope you don't mind that I edited it a little.

~*~ Caviar? no thanks! ~*~

Na no problem mate

nice article mate!

Pretty decent article. One extra note, another trigger for fish spawning, one that is actually the real reason for the "Rain" trigger, large changes in Barometric pressure. I tend to watch the weather reports for big changes, especially drops, and when I catch it I try to do massive water changes to simulate the rain storms. However, I can't always do the water change, and big pressure drops still invariably trigger some type of breeding, while water changes alone are less certain. I've had as many as 15 species of fish spawn almost simultaneously when there was a barometric drop of over .5 inch (not sure what that translates to in millibars).

Edit: and note my signature, which was written before I read your article!

[span class="edited"][Edited by MasterKillieKeeper 2004-08-21 15:45][/span]

Interesting article. I'm quite new to the hobby, though I'm learning quickly, and have a clutch of eggs strapped onto some driftwood, courtesy of two blue convict cichlids. While this happened (I didn't do anything that you had said, however, I purchased some new food they seem to like...so maybe that's it) I realised that I don't know what to feed them. They're too small to eat any pellets or anything, right? so what do I do?

You can pick up "Fry food" from any local fish store. My firemouths just had babies but they won't come to the top since the parents keep them down near the bottom. So I just dip the tip of my finger in the water and put it in the fish fry food and kind of tap the water so that the fish fry food sinks to wherever they are at. So far this has worked pretty good.