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I have always kept my breeding stock at pH 7 and introduced them to ph 5.5 for breeding ( rain water filtered over peat to get the pH low)

I am experimenting with keeping them at pH 4.5 and then putting them into a tank at 5.5 to see if this triggers spawning better.

Cardinals spawn in the wet season in the Amazon (uper reaches) when the river floods over the forest floor . Theoretically this may raise the Ph for breeding?

My own bred fish seem to be better than stock from the shop.

i used aged water from planted tanks

Do you use R.O. water or rain water? Do you acclimate your cardinals to above acidic water or do you keep them in acidic water? I'm thinking of getting some now and attempting to breed them but I am wondering if I should acclimate them to my display tank (its pH is about 7.0).

i bred my cardinals in the same fashion as my neons
i noticed the fry counts peak then suddenly die off so i was always aquiring new females n never bred a single female more then 3 times after i noticed the fry counts dropping
cardinals were easier to get to spawn but i never got the success i had with neons
in less then a year i got over well over 4000 neon fry
in that same time maybe 200 cardinal fry tops
ive found that neons r the hardest tetra to breed that ive kept except black widows which i never got them to spawn

I filter the vinegar eels through some filter fiber. I use the narrow neck jar method so that the eels swim to fresh water. The little ones I have are fat, so they are eating, the thing is I don't see many once they hatch, just a few. I'm thinking of adding a little methylene blue next time I attempt to breed them, after I raise the ones I have. Do you find cardinals much more difficult? Do you keep them in acidic water? I acclimate my neons to about 7.0 once they are around a half inch long. If you breed cardinals I might want to pick your brain a bit more.

Breeding Neons requires just about the same conditions as Cardinals. A good description.

I have not found that shing a light into the fry hurts their chances. The hardest thing is getting the right food to them. Filter the vinegar eels and also get some Paramecium for the first 3-4 days. You yield will be better.

I got one Cardinal the first time but with experimentation I have increased that to a best of 116. from a singe pair.

I have found the virility drops off after one or two spawnings and I was wondereing if anyone has any ideas why?

I speculate that the change in water conditions ( down to 5.5 pH triggers the spawning but I undersatnd that Cardinals in the wild live at pH 3-4 !

Neons aren't worth breeding for their monetary value, but if you just want to breed them like I do then do it. Here's an account of how I bred my neons:

Here is one of the best sites I've found for breeding neons.
http://mike-edwardes.members.beeb.net/Pinnesi.html
Some people say why bother breeding neons since they are so cheap, might as well buy them, but I like to breed just for the fun of breeding, plus to have some that I've raised up would be incredible. Two weeks ago I acclimated around 9 neons from my community tank to the breeding tank. My Comm. tank has a pH of 7 and the breeding tank pH is around 5.5 - 6 (its hard to measure the pH cause my tester only goes down to 6.5). I collected rain water and put it in another 10 gallon with peat moss in it and had a box filter in there to filter the water through some carbon. Then I transferred that water into the acclimation 10 gallon tank. After acclimating them for around a week (replacing the comm. tank water they were in with carbon filtered rain water, a little at a time) I then set them up in a 10 gallon breeding tank. I bought some green mesh material at Wal-Mart for like less than a buck. I also bought some clothes pins and black cardboard paper. I taped cardboard on 3 sides of the 10 gallon. I made some spawning mops, put those on top of the mesh netting, and sunk the mesh netting in the breeder tank about half way, clipping the mesh netting to the sides of the 10 gallon with clothespins. I have a small sponge filter in the breeding tank with light aeration. After acclimating the neons for a week, and keeping the males and females seperated by a tank divider, I put them all together in the breeding tank (I have 3 females and 6 males, normally its recommended to have a 1:1 ratio, but ah well). I took them out after a day, but nothing came of that try. So a week later I tried it again, seperating them then reintroducing them into the breeding tank. I left them in there for 3 days before taking them out. I noticed what I thought were some eggs on the bottom. A few days later I noticed some fry in the tank (not that many, but still some). Ah, success!!! At around a week after they were bred, I started feeding with microworms and vinegar eels. I've only noticed around 3 at a time, but they are still very small now and there are probably more. I'm hoping they yield is around 20, but I was quite nosy during the whole process and couldn't go a day without shining a flashlight into the tank just for a little bit to see some fry. I don't know if this hurt any eggs early on, but next time I'll just wait a full week before every peering into the tank. As of now the fry I notice in there are doing well. I wish you luck on your endeavor to breed neons and the recommended page at the top of this post was a source I couldn't do without.

I posted this on another site and am right now breeding more neons. I have some that are around 22 days old now and are growing. A major reason I'm breeding them is because I hear the F2 generation breeds much better than the F1. Anywho, good luck to ya.
Eph. 2:10

there isnt much money in neons if thats y u want to breed them they r hard to get to breed n u must leave the tank in the dark for several weeks n the fry r even harder to raise once u get a group breeding successfully tho u will have a thousand neons pretty quick but many many die so dont get ur hopes up

Breeding neon tetras is supposedly a tough business, for several reasons. First, it is reportedly tough to induce the fish to do the actual spawning. Secondly, the eggs are sensitive to light (like cardinal tetra eggs and fry) and e to fungus, while the fry are somewhat light-sensitive as well. In my opinion, it isn't worth breeding these fish money-wise, as neons are easy to find and obtain. However, if you really like neon tetras, then by all means go for it!

Also, I've never heard of sick fry contaminating tankmates. Usually when fry get sick, they die very quickly. I guarantee that you will not have fry kill all your other fish though, because they would be eaten first, if not in their egg form. Neon tetras are best spawned, hatched, and raised in seperate tanks.

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