Cat Person?

[Dieses Madchen]

Ragardless of the ease of breeding common livebearers, I think the most fun comes with the challenge of keeping the babies alive, which includes setting up a fry tank, finding, and catching the little houdinis. Are they easy to breed? Heck yeah! Is it easy to save the fry? I would have to say no.

 

[FishBlast]

Ragardless of the ease of breeding common livebearers, I think the most fun comes with the challenge of keeping the babies alive, which includes setting up a fry tank, finding, and catching the little houdinis. Are they easy to breed? Heck yeah! Is it easy to save the fry? I would have to say no.

Well, the amount of fry I woke up to from my swordtails would have easily added a few more to the net, I just chose not to save them since what ever amount survives will stay and grow in the same tank. My mom saved one before I got back home with a new plant. I guess that's due to the nest my hoplo made for them at the top. He ripped away a lot of ceratopteris and made some kind of crown of plants and was blowing bubbles under it (and failing to make a real nest). He's doing it wrong. -.-

As for fry survival, that's a bit harder, I have lost 2 out of 4 fry I have saved (could have saved around 15 last month). So I have lost 50% in a month, but that's the usual I have lost out of any amount of guppy or swordtail fry even before this. The easy part is that they eat powdered flakes so I don't have to make egg yolk pasta for them since they're not as small as a flea.

 

[This Old Spouse]

I started with a 5g plastic tank from Walmart that my neighbor gave me, with 3 male guppies, a Chinese algae eater and something else I can't remember. I upgraded to a 10g (free) and added some female guppies. And so I went through a guppy-laden period, and even added some fiddler crabs. Then I came across a 55g setup free on Freecycle with all the trimmings. That is still my community tank. Then came a 20g long tank that's now my cory tank. Then a 29g for the tiger barbs and red eye tetras. All my tanks have been free. My husband just bought a 75g complete setup for $200 (everything was practically new) and he's set up a discus habitat, with 2 BNs and a couple of synodontis cats. I have a 15g for all my cory fry and red cherry shrimp, and a 10g houses a wild sunfish. I still have that 5g to use as a Q tank when I need it.

Slowly but surely all the tanks (except the 10g) have been outfitted with canister filters and inline heaters, switched from gravel to sand, and have a wide assortment of plants. There are days when I want to give all the fish away and break down the tanks, and other days when I want to find a place to set up that spare 55g!

The disease is terminal, I'm afraid ....

 

[Dieses Madchen]

I could never find the fry lol. THey all got eaten before i knew they were there lol

 

[FishBlast]

I could never find the fry lol. THey all got eaten before i knew they were there lol

I was amazed at the amount of calico fry my little Bee has made this month. 3 or 4 (not sure if one that was under a rock was the same I saw behind the filter) and so easy to spot, they were bigger than the first drop. There was also a red one that the hoplo was hiding, then it went under a rock and I haven't seen it since. Probably got eaten by its father.

The newborn fry my mom saved is a bit over half the size of my 1 month olds. Hope it's a female, because I'm pretty sure I have 1 male calico in there already, and Pinky seems to be female but not sure.
So far, 3 fry in the net. If all 3 survive and have 2 females and 1 male or at least 2 males 1 female, I'll only need to get 1 more female from another source.

 

[OldMan47]

Fishblast, if you want to raise egg layers try something really simple like convicts. They are egg layers but people use them like guppies to provide fry sized feeder fish for their predators. They breed freely and will start again in a couple of weeks if you remove their fry. An adult convict is only about 3 inches long so you can breed a pair alone in a 10 gallon.

 

[FishBlast]

Fishblast, if you want to raise egg layers try something really simple like convicts. They are egg layers but people use them like guppies to provide fry sized feeder fish for their predators. They breed freely and will start again in a couple of weeks if you remove their fry. An adult convict is only about 3 inches long so you can breed a pair alone in a 10 gallon.

The problem is like this:
I want a community tank to be used for raising a small colony of fish (as in the case of the swordtails I'm raising now), but having a 20-30 gallon all-egg layer community tank (convicts + corydoras as example).
Now the problem is:
Wouldn't the cories eat the convict cichlid's eggs before I can save them? Or vice versa, convicts eating cory eggs before I could save them?

I am not breeding for selling, I am breeding to build up a colony with a set number of individuals (6 swordtails in current case). With swordtails, they have a chance of escaping their own parents, they can hide, whereas some eggs would be an easy target for the adults in a lightly planted tank.

 

[OldMan47]

You have never watched convicts guard a nest FishBlast. I would worry more about the cories than about the eggs. Convicts are very attentive parents.

 

[FishBlast]

You have never watched convicts guard a nest FishBlast. I would worry more about the cories than about the eggs. Convicts are very attentive parents.

Interesting. But what if I'd want to breed something like Betta Imbellis or some kind of gourami? Or the cories themselves? Those would have trouble guarding a nest.
Hoplos might work, but they get aggressive and attack anything from what I've heard. Never bred them, just grew them so I don't know.

 

[OldMan47]

Many fish are quite good parents but you cannot expect a tiny fish to defend a territory against something several times their size. I have seen rainbow cichlids, with a size of only about 3 inches, defend their fry against a tank full of fish up to 5 inches in length, but they would fail against a tank full of adult oscars. Everything has its limits but that does not detract from the fish's attempt to protect the fry. Sometimes they simply have no chance to succeed due to size differences. The B. imbellis, at only 1.5 inches adult size, are going to have a hard time in almost any community tank.

 

[FishBlast]

Many fish are quite good parents but you cannot expect a tiny fish to defend a territory against something several times their size. I have seen rainbow cichlids, with a size of only about 3 inches, defend their fry against a tank full of fish up to 5 inches in length, but they would fail against a tank full of adult oscars. Everything has its limits but that does not detract from the fish's attempt to protect the fry. Sometimes they simply have no chance to succeed due to size differences. The B. imbellis, at only 1.5 inches adult size, are going to have a hard time in almost any community tank.

Would imbellis be unable to defend against corydoras, even if mini cories? Then again, I don't know how many would fit in a 20 gallon high anyway as a breeding colony. Rainbows being even bigger, I think one pair would be max that can be kept. Oh well, maybe some day I'll be able to keep a second and much larger tank, and see what I'll populate it with as egg-layer exclusive. Thank you for the info.

 

[StandbySetting]

You have expressed a common egg layer prejudice FishBlast. When you have bred Brachyrhaphis roseni, you can come back and say something like that. If you ever try to say those livebearers are easy I will indeed be surprised. Only guppies, mollies, swordtails and platies are all that easy. Many of the other livebearers are a bit of a challenge.
My brachy female:

That's a beautiful fish OM47

 

[OldMan47]

It is a Brachyrhaphis roseni and is only 1.5 inches long as a full grown adult. I never did succeed in finding any roseni fry due to their propensity to hunting all fry. Those darned things were next to impossible to breed in my little tanks. They are voracious fry eaters.

 

[FishBlast]

It is a Brachyrhaphis roseni and is only 1.5 inches long as a full grown adult. I never did succeed in finding any roseni fry due to their propensity to hunting all fry. Those darned things were next to impossible to breed in my little tanks. They are voracious fry eaters.

Some people have claimed that the Brachyrhaphis are easy to breed on some website, but no idea how they breed them, maybe they keep them separate or watch them all the time or have a ton of vegetation and a giant tank. Or maybe all those together.

 

[OldMan47]

I had so many plants and so much java moss in the brachy tank that the adults had trouble swimming. I still never found any fry.