FishProfiles.com Message Forums

I just did a major overhaul of the tank and got my nitrates to go from 120+ to virtually nothing (okay, water changes can work, I learned my lesson ). Now I've noticed over the past couple of days that some of my serpaes have turned a darker shade of red, but only ones that have larger fins with big white tips on the ends of the bottom ones. They seem to either fight with each other or chase the lighter ones around the tank. On a slightly unrelated note, my male gourami has also darkened and even tried to build a bubble nest for the first time in his life. Is it possible my serpaes may be breeding? If so, what should I do to prep for the incoming little ones? I have a gravel substrate in the tank, though I'm not sure if that matters for serpaes or not.

i would take any other fish out and put them in another tank or prep the other tank...tank of no less then 10 gallons... and put some bushy plants in their for them to put their eggs on they should breed with a small water change and you should feed them fatty foods like brineshrimp...frozen or live... and blood worms...frozen.

There's one teensy-weensy problem with that: I don't have any other tank save an emergency hospital 5-gallon. Even if I could afford to get another one, there's no way that I could cycle it in a matter of hours.

I'm not expecting to save all the baby serpaes if and should they appear. I'm also not trying to intentionally breed the serpaes, I'm just asking for advice should they decide to do it on their own. All I'm wondering is if there's anyway I can help protect them with the one tank that I have. There's some nice hornwort in the tank, so I think I'm set for bushy plants.

They did breed in my old tank before (technically my father's tank)...basically my father just stopped trimming the plant(still regular water change tho, he was too busy back then)..the plant all went crazy and covered the whole tank..then a month later..when he really got time to clean up the mess..we found serpaes babies...so talking of tetras, serpaes r relatively easy to get them to breed I guess. (head and tail light did breed once too I recall, was like 7-8 yrs ago anyway..lol)