Educate me. Breeder tank

[gwand]

What is special about the volume and dimensions of a 40 gallon breeder tank that makes it conducive for breeding?

 

[GaryE]

It's more a tank for breeders to buy. It is an excellent size for raising fry. The name doesn't come from its usefulness for actually breeding fish.

It has a good volume, but isn't deep. Several might fit on a rack, especially as its front to back depth lends itself to stair type racks for easy access.

It's generally easy to get fish to breed, but the test of skill includes being able to raise them up as healthy individuals so they can be enjoyed by others. I'm sure there are hobbyists who are fish spawners, and leave it at that, but that label sounds bad.

 

[gwand]

It's more a tank for breeders to buy. It is an excellent size for raising fry. The name doesn't come from its usefulness for actually breeding fish.

It has a good volume, but isn't deep. Several might fit on a rack, especially as its front to back depth lends itself to stair type racks for easy access.

It's generally easy to get fish to breed, but the test of skill includes being able to raise them up as healthy individuals so they can be enjoyed by others. I'm sure there are hobbyists who are fish spawners, and leave it at that, but that label sounds bad.

Do you breed one pair per tank regardless of species? Once fry are capable you remove parents and raise fry in the breeding tank?

 

[GaryE]

There are so many ways to breed fish.
With Cichlids, I go with one pair per tank. How large a tank depends on the size and aggressivity of the species. Right now, my Nanochromis and Congochromis are in 20s. My Paranaochromis are in 30 inch tanks, because while they are small, they can get aggressive. My Chomidotilapia are in 4 footers. But I have no Cichlids as large as a hobby krib. I like small fish.
If they breed, I leave the fry with the parents for 3-4 weeks. Then I usually move the parents out, as they''re easier to catch, and grow the fry in the tank.
I breed tetras, killies and small barbs in 5 or 10 gallon tanks. I've been using 5s for small tetras, moving the parents out after 36 hours and starting the fry out in small tanks, moving them to 10s and then 20s.
Some fish have miniscule fry, and you need to keep them close to food.

Cichlids pose an added problem. I don't just want to raise them, I want to raise them well. I believe we all have instincts that need to be modeled or triggered to work their best, and Cichlids have very developed parenting instincts you may not see if they haven't been well parented. I want my Cichlid fry to experience natural broodcare. When they breed, they parent well. If you look at domestic angels, where every one is a dollar sign and they are often taken from the parents as eggs to maximize yield, you see a lot of egg eating and kind of twisted breeding behaviour. Those with the strongest drive figure it out in a couple of broods, but a lot of them never learn. I think it's because they've never learned as fry. So I always give them that chance. A young pair may lose numbers of fry to mistakes, but the survivors will be better parents, and each brood will get larger. I'm not in it for the money, and numbers don't matter much. They actually can become a problem.

There are no rules. Breeding fish has shown me the weirdest things. I've seen Apistogramma sp "Vielfleck" in QT breed, with 2 males politely taking turns fertilizing eggs, with no fighting. I would never expect to see it again with other species. I'd love to be wrong. I've had fish spawn in 2 different nests, as insurance, I guess. I've had fry colonies develop - fish villages - where Neolamprologus marenguensis broods took on tasks raising their younger siblings in a beehive of beautiful fish. Watching complex mouthbrooders, where both parents care for the young for extended periods and trade mouthfulls of babies back and forth never gets old.

I've had fish for 58 years, and my first fry appeared a few weeks after I got my first tank as a nerdy 8 year old. I fully intend to be an old man with fishtanks, pottering away on a million projects for as long as I can. I've reached the point where I can predict what I'll see, and maybe set things up so I can see it for myself, rather than reading about it. Sometimes, I get to breed species for the first first time in captivity. I breed common fish, uncommon fish... but it's generally always a tricky, challenging game.

My Parananochromis brevirostris bred once, early last Spring. They've spawned since, but it seems to break down after they hatch. I'm doing something wrong and I'm not sure what. No one has to be murdered for me to play at being Sherlock Holmes on that mystery. They've spawned every 3-4 weeks since the success, on what was maybe the 3rd or 4th spawn. What did I do right? That'll keep me busy out in the fishroom.

Every species is different.

 

[gwand]

Thanks. That is very helpful.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I mostly breed plecos and especially Hypancistrus. I have my own preferences. I set up the tanks for doing this for a numbers of reasons. Because plecos males are territorial, it makes footprint more important than volume or height. because the plecos I keep are the smaller ones, I predominantly use 3 sizes of tanks- 20L, 33L and a 36 x28 inch breeder tank. I have 30 B, 40B and a 50- all have the same footprint. When I have had to deal with higher volumes of adults and offspring I have used a 75 and even a 125, but these are the exception not the rule.

Next, I follow two basic rules in how I do things. I do not believe in breeding pleco pairs. I feel that nature has developed a breeding strategy for these fish which is designed to produce the most healthy offspring possible. This requires that the top males and females in a group breed with each other and the rest get left out in the cold. The fish have an instinctive methodology for choosing who spawns with whom and I cannot make as good a choice as they can, so I work with groups and let the fish do the deciding.

Next, the females are able to produce eggs about every 2 weeks but the males need about a month from spawn to when they boot the free swimming babies from the cave and the male is free to spawn again. What this means is that the ideal sex ratio would be 2 males for every one female. The other thing to know is that in any given group of fish not everybody spawns. In fact it might surprise folks to learn that in a large school of tetras maybe 10-20% get to spawn. Nature at work here of course.

The other interesting thing is that the offspring seem to grow faster when left in the breeder tank as opposed to moving them to a grow tank. I believe part of this suggests that newborn need to acquire some gut bacteria by consuming a bit of the poop from more mature individuals who have the needed bacteria. So when I set up a new grow tank I will always move over some of the poop from the breeder tank. Ultimately the passing of the poop is a continuous thing in a grow tank since a few of the fish will last there for a bit longer than average and they become the poop supplier to future fry added to the tank.

Perhaps the most important thing I do when it comes to breeding is the ch0ice of foods i feed. Live is usually the best option, but for a few reasons I do not use. it. This has led me to find the next best foods after live. Finally, water parameters matters.

One last observation about breeding. All of the fish we keep have one thing in common, they all want to spawn. So, what our role in breeding entails is not doing things that might discourage the fish from doing so. Give them the right parameters, the right scape, the best foods and then do the proper tank maint. and 9 out of 10 times the fish will spawn. Of course there are those species which require conditions we cannot easily provide and they are considered difficult to impossible to spawn in captivity, at least without hormones etc.

The benefits to so called breeder tanks is they hold more fish in a shorter length than many of the other options. A 3 x 1.5 foot tank has a 4.5 square foot area while a 4 x 1 foot tank has a 4 square foot area. So, when area matters, those breeders tanks are pretty usefull.

 

[gwand]

I assume the substrate you select for a breeding tank depends on the fish you are breeding? Do you add plants? For my a. cacatuoides and the pulchers I was thinking black sand and a few coconut caves, no plants. Flat slate on black sand for a. Thomasi. I would only have one pair in the breeding tank.

I can lower the GH to around 50 ppm in a breeding tank by siphoning off my well water before it goes through the calcium carbonate system used to take the pH from 5.5 to 7.2. I was burning wholes in my copper plumbing before we began treating the water. I inherited the copper from the previous owner.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

No plants in my pleco tanks at all. The tank light is there only to enable me to work in the tank and see what I am doing. I have done bare bottom, small gravel and sand in my breeding and grow tanks. But in the end I settled on sand in them all.

 

[gwand]

The first three species I would like to consecutively breed are a. thomasi, a. cacatuoides and p. pulcher. The first two pairs are easy to net and transfer to the breeding tank but the pulchers are almost always hiding in rock caves and coconut caves within a 60 gallon. Even feeding time doesn’t usher in their appearance. Any suggestions? That’s problem #1. Problem #2 is I cannot differentiate male vs female a. thomasi. I know the dominant male. There is a smaller butterfly that may be the female. But I am not certain.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Fish in caves are the easiest to move. Use a net over the entances as ypu remove the cave so the fish cannot escape. If the cave wond't hold water and/or you need to move is some discatnce. put it into a bucket with cater to cover the cave and move it that way.

I have been moving my plecos dads and their eggs/wigglers/close to fully absorbed yolk sack for years. I have never lost a dad or an offspring at any stage doing this.

I moved one of my big (10 inch) clown loaches by catching it when it was inside one of the big caves I provide for the big ones. I needed to move it from its 150 gal. home to a 20L Hospital tank and then back to the 150 once it was cured. I caught it in the cave both times.

 

[anewbie]

What is special about the volume and dimensions of a 40 gallon breeder tank that makes it conducive for breeding?

Ignore the word breeder. What makes a good breeding tank depends on the fish. However the extra width has a lot of advantages.

 

[anewbie]

The first three species I would like to consecutively breed are a. thomasi, a. cacatuoides and p. pulcher. The first two pairs are easy to net and transfer to the breeding tank but the pulchers are almost always hiding in rock caves and coconut caves within a 60 gallon. Even feeding time doesn’t usher in their appearance. Any suggestions? That’s problem #1. Problem #2 is I cannot differentiate male vs female a. thomasi. I know the dominant male. There is a smaller butterfly that may be the female. But I am not certain.

None of these three fishes are difficult to breed. If you want to actually raise frys they should be kept alone or optionally with some dithers that will not eat the frys. kribs and domestic a. cockatoo will easily breed in medium soft water (tds 100 is fine with lower kh value 3 or lower is good).

They will take little effort but the a. cockatoo fry might need some live bbs (baby brine shrimp) to make it the first few weeks.

I haven't bred a. thomasi so no comments.

a 20 long would be suitable for these three fishes - but a 40b is also fine or a 29 is fine.

kribs form strong pairs so once paired just add water and wait for frys.

cockatoo will never pair and domestic cockatoo can be quite violent with each other so you need wood to break line of sight - she will want to bread in a cave.

no comment on a. thomasi.

If you are going with wild caught cockatoo the rules change a little - such as very very soft acidic water (ph 5 - ec below 40 but this depends on catch location as some are white water and want a bit more mineral in the water others are true blackwater).

 

[GaryE]

A. thomasi were the hardest of the 3 for me, though pulcher will be back in a paragraph or two. thomasi needed very soft water - almost no measurable hardness for me to get anywhere. They would spawn in my then tap (pH 7.4, 140 GH) but no eggs would hatch. I recall having to go down well below 40 ppm to get anything. I used a 15 gallon with a 24 inch footprint - a shallow tank. I didn't have easy access to soft water, so the lower volume helped. The fry were easy to raise and grew at a good clip.

There's a strong chance of the hobby's thomasi being two similar species. I bred wild caught Guinean ones.

I bred many different pairs of cacatuoides. I would estimate 6 or 7 different arrivals - blues, yellows, red spotted, giant dorsal spiked - a nice range of wild forms some of which were probably different species. It was a benefit of hanging around at an importing company, and I got to see a lot of diversity.

All were different morphs, and all but one pair were wild caught. They all would easily spawn at 140ppm, and all would hatch. Once I moved to a place with softer water, I had larger hatches, but they were very adaptable. I also bred the double/triple red aquarium form - same conditions. I never bred your orange flash morph, as it wasn't my taste in cacatuoides, but my friend George supplied all the local pet stores with them. He had pH 6.8, 80 ppm water. I expect they would have been fine in my 140ppm water.

Your problem is the pulcher. Domestic kribs (P pulcher) are 'just add water' fish, but Ndonga like yours are a softwater form. I admit, I was hoping you'd get Pelvicachromis kribensis, because they are easier to start out with. It sounds counterintuitive, since pulcher is everywhere in the hobby and kribensis are relatively rare (before anyone jumps on me, hobby kribensis are actually pulcher, as a result of a 75 year old misidentification....). But the common krib/pulcher has been in the hobby for decades, and selection has been at work. Uncommon kribs like your pulcher are the real thing, and they don't cooperate as easily.

I'll disagree with @anewbie on cacatuoides pairing. I had some pretty solid pairs, with both parents participating in intense broodcare. What I did note was that when one partner or the other wasn't a good parent, the other would kill it. When things go wrong in a cacatuoides pair, one fish, often the male, gets killed. They would hit each other close to where the gills met underneath, and even a much larger male was a goner. I saw that happen. Instant death. When the pairing worked, it was part of the greatest show on earth. When it didn't, it was ugly.

I preferred using 30 inch tanks for them.

For my failed attempts to breed wild caught pulcher, I used 36 inch tanks. Domestic kribs could be bred in 30 inch tanks, or even 24 inch if they were young. I preferred giving them more space, and found my wilds to be more aggressive. That was 30 years ago, and I'd probably use larger tanks now.

 

[gwand]

Thanks Gary for the information. I was set on Pelvicachromis kribensis Moliwe and waited three months to find them. I got impatient, a bad trait in this hobby, and bought wild pulchers from The Wet Spot. Two weeks later The Wet Spot finally had p. Krib Moliwe available. Bad me.

 

[anewbie]

Thanks Gary for the information. I was set on Pelvicachromis kribensis Moliwe and waited three months to find them. I got impatient, a bad trait in this hobby, and bought wild pulchers from The Wet Spot. Two weeks later The Wet Spot finally had p. Krib Moliwe available. Bad me.

Well wild even if the common species are going to be more difficult in general. I use ro water for all my aquariums these days but 2 as i mostly keep dwarf cichild and pretty much just sa fishes ('cept loaches and rasbora which are asian).
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@GaryE I find your description of cockatoo contradictory. Every species of apistogramma i've bred including cockatoo the male has not participated in actual rearing of fry. When the frys get older they have migrated to him esp if the female as a new brood but he did not actually care for them beyond providing them a safe haven in guarding his territory.

This is very different than for example my l. araguaiae (which are also wc) where the male will actually watch over the frys while the female eats or takes a break for whatever reason. they actually work fairly well as a pair and exhibt true paring behavior as they move the frys around the aquarium.