Dwarf Resbora, Boraras Maculata - Breeding

[Themuleous]

Hello people

Just wondering if anyone has tried to breed them? Got a shoal of 26 and it would be cool to get them to breed. The tank is my EI nano at around 24lt, with a base of HC, but nothing else. pH is 6.2ish, with kH and GH around 5, filtered with an eheim classic 2211 and I recently turned the spray bar around so it points at the glass as I think the flow rate has always been far to strong. Feed them crushed flake.

Any advice would be appreciated

Thanks

Sam

 

[Lateral Line]

I have bred these in the past. Given the right conditions, they are actually quite easy to spawn, the difficulty is raising the fry, which may be less of a problem these days with modern fry food preparations. I used my regular technique, seperate males and females for a few weeks conditioning them with good quality varied food. Water is soft, ~2degrees hardness, pH 6, 26C, lightly peat filtered to add some humic acid.

I used my regular 55g breeding tanks with a gravel substrate, a lot of low crypts and a few taller bunches of hornwort. Water about 150mm deep. So a female was added on the morning before spawning, the male last thing before lights out. Fish spawn at first light. Clutch is small, 30-40 microscopic eggs which hatch after 24 hours into microscopic fry. Free swimming quite quickly, about 3 days, all but impossible to see, just feed a lot of infusoria, (or nowdays, a good liquid fry food), couple of well matured sponge filters for rotifers, and see how many survive.

The fry, like all Rasbora fry, are VERY sensitive. Water quality must be spot on or they turn over. In a large tank, this is easier to acheive, a common mistake is to try in really small tanks, it can be done but the water changes need to be pretty much continuous.

A shoal in a decent sized species tank with the correct water chemistry will spawn almost continuously, and if there is enough plant cover, a few fry will survive without any special care. Your shoal can thus become self sustaining. The same is true of most of the very small Rasboras.

With good water and adequate supplies of small food, the little members of the group are easier then the larger ones.

 

[Themuleous]

Cheers matey thats some excellent advice, will see what I can come up with. Would be great if I could achieve it.

BTW when you say separate the males and females, do you mean all the males in one tank and all the females in another? Any tips on sexing them? And what sort of varied food did you use?

Thanks again

Sam