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Could someone please help me increase my chances of "accidental" breeding

Beastije

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Hi
So I have three fishtanks with three types of fish that are not that hard to breed and have bred for me in the past under slightly different conditions. I cannot fully replicate those conditions now, but would like to increase my chances of breeding in the tanks they are in at this moment. I believe it has to do a lot with feeding.
Could someone maybe help me devise a feeding startegy that would increase the chances of the eggs not being eaten by the parents, and the fry, if hatched, having stuff to eat?

Now let me get to the backstory:
The easiest fish, White Cloud Mountain Minnow. I have them for two years, and managed to breed them when I moved a trio to a different small tank, left for 24 hours and moved away, keeping the tank empty, week later, fry. Now the parents are in a tank that has no other predator fish (panda garra, shrimp), but the biggest problem I assume is the other WCMM in the tank, the tank size (150liters) and the flow coming from the filter. The tank is semi planted, even some floaters that I assumed would work for the fry, but I have never seen any. I see them spawn regularly, but I assume the other wcmm fish eat it. I downsized from 35 to a group of 10. Is there any way how to increase success in breeding these?
Picture of the tank
IMG_2483.JPG



Second fish type, Pseudomugil Luminatus. I have had my group for a year and three months now, plus I bought them at noticeable sexes, so basically 5 month old fish. Now my males are dying off due to old age. In the past, when they were alone in the same tank as they are in now, just with rabbit snails, they bred in the tank too, I could see fry, and I managed to feed it and reach adulthood. I had about 5 fry like that. I also used a spawning mop, though sporadically, and managed to raise 3 more fry. I have added 10 pygmy corydoras, redid the plants so now there are much more surface coverage and spawning places, which means they dont really spawn in the mop anymore. Any chance I can feed them enough to not eat all the eggs/babies?
Picture of the tank, not the best quality.
1728559470415.png


Third fish, Clown Killifish epiplatys annulatus . I got them last august, three pairs. Given I knew they were adult and would start breeding, a month after I got them I started feeding the surface of the tank daily with powder food and overfed the tank. It got massive snail/algae issues, but I also got two fry out of it. I knew with juveniles in the tank, the chance of other fry surviving was nill, so I added shrimp, few darios I had and let the tank be. But now, the fry is year old, smaller still than its parents but I would assume out of the juvenile stage. Also as luck would have it, the fry was a male/female, so now I have four pairs in a 40 liter tank. I moved the darios, kept the shrimp (like 5 shrimp, with darios and even the clown killifish the shrimplets have zero chance) and expected some more fry. But I am unsure if I should do the powder feeding of the surface, since it leads to disastrous algae situation and my plant/algae situation in this tank is already bad enough. Tips would be appreciated
IMG_2498.JPG


In regards of feeding. I feed once a day with a day break in the week. The wmcc I feed frozen food, live bbs, live microworms and fluval bug bites. The other two tanks get live bbs, microworms and hikari first bites with occasional frozen cyclops.

Thanks
 
Get the other species of fish and the shrimp and any snails out of the white cloud tank because they will be eating the eggs. Same deal with all the tanks. You only want 1 species of fish per tank for breeding and no shrimp or snails because they all eat fish eggs.

The Pseudomugils either lay their eggs in plants or depressions in the substrate. If you remove the plants and put a spawning mop in the tank you will get the eggs in that and can swap the mop over every few days or pick the eggs off them.

The clown killis need their own tank. Get the snails and shrimp out if you want to see any eggs.

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When breeding fish or conditioning them to breed, you feed them 3-5 times a day, every day. Do this for at least 2 weeks (preferably 4) before they actually breed so they produce high quality gametes.

You feed them as much as they can eat.

Feed dry food first, then frozen and then live foods (all in one feeding session).
I fed flake food first.
Then marine mix (fish, prawn, squid, blended and frozen into cubes). Use a pr of scissors to cut it into little bits.
Then frozen bloodworms or brineshrimp.
Then grindal worms, microworms and finally newly hatched brineshrimp.

The reason I fed in that order was the bigger dry foods got eaten and filled up the greedy fish. As they got fuller, the foods got smaller and eventually they get newly hatched brineshrimp that can swim around the tank for an hour or so and they can pick at it over that time.

Do big water changes and gravel clean the substrate every few days to keep the water clean when feeding more often.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Keep the filters clean too. Clean them at least once a month.
 

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