Hi. Thanks for that info - so you have successfully bred glowlights before? This is the procedure that I am following, tell me what you think:
I keep the female glowlights in one tank (with some other female tetras that I am also breeding), and I keep the males in another tank (with the corresponding males for the other tetras). I keep the water in each tank nice and warm and clean with an acidic pH. I feed the fish frozen blood worms, live mosquito larvae, fish scrapings, flake and pellets (several brands). I set up a small spawning tank (contains about 10 litres of water) with a plastic home-made spawning grid on the bottom (made from some pvc pipe to make a square covered with plastic mesh) a spawning mop made out of knitting wool attached to a cork float placed over the spawning grid, a heater, and an open ended airline (I don't bother with a filter yet, not until there are valid eggs in their, then I'd put in a small sponge filter). I also put a small heater in the tank to keep things steady.
I cover the back and sides of the tank with cardboard and the top with a dark towel (thanks for the tip Big J, but I'm already keeping the tank fairly dark). I keep a thermometer in the tank to keep tabs on the temperature.
I have tried various types of water. I have tried a 50-50 mix of bottled distilled water with dechlorinated tap water and I have also tried 100% water from the parents tanks.
I put a fat female and a couple of males in the tank just before I go to bed and the next day there are eggs in the tank, heaps of them.
But - EVERY single time without fail they have all fungussed! It is very frustrating!
Perhaps the males are too young? Some sources say that the males need to be 6 months old whereas the pet shop says they can breed from 2-3 months?
I have had the fish since Christmas so they are at least 3 months old. If they were say 2-3 months old in the shop already at Christmas that means they would possibly be getting close to 6 months old by now. Hmmm. Do males still go through the motions, so to speak, even if they are too young to actually produce sperm and fertilise the eggs?
How do you know that 8 months is when they are sexually mature? It would be good to know that kind of information, none of the books that I have on fish go into that level of detail. I'm interested in knowing whether the males can go through the motions even if they aren't mature?
It seems unusual that I fish that has only a short lifespan (a couple of years for a glowlight?), wouldn't be at it's breeding peak until it's around 14 months old - I mean - wouldn't nature dictate that this animal should breed younger? My local pet shop told me they can breed at 2 -3 months of age!
Now I'm really confused!
Bob.
Glowlight Tetras are sexually mature at about 8 months, but the yields at that age are low. With small tetras like that, I usually breed them after a year and then some, typically 14 months. That said, a lot depends on the conditions.