ok... so you are breeding... how much do you landscape breeder or holding tanks???

[Magnum Man]

I would assume the general consensus is to landscape the breeder tanks, but it seems painful to remove fish, out of landscaped tanks... if you have holding tanks, are those generally pretty plain? but unless you are doing egg layers that deposited on a mop, or other easily removable structure removing baby fish must be pretty challenging??

heard talks about no substrate tanks... I'm not a fan, but if the fish are ok with it, it likely makes removing scattered eggs or fry easier???

 

[GaryE]

I do it differently by species. My dwarf cichlids dig as part of their nesting, so I like to watch that. They also need complex decors to lead their young to, and to control their territoriality and sheer aggression.
Plant spawning killies don't care about the substrate.
Egg scatterers get bare bottomed tanks with fake, egg hiding structures. Scatterers are usually egg eaters. But adhesive egg producers need something for eggs to adhere to. And some will spawn in a substrate.

 

[emeraldking]

I don't really scape my breeding tanks. They should be functional. But I do envy how other people can scape their tanks beautifully...

 

[Innesfan]

Most of my planned breeding, Nannostomus and Killies, are in colony breeding tanks that are thickly planted to provide spawning sites and refuge for fry.

 

[Magnum Man]

so, to catch babies, requires unscaping???

 

[GaryE]

Sometimes, for me. Or, ideally, I leave babies and catch adults. That can be waiting for them to grow, or removing the breeders to their next tank. With my Parananochromis and their odd fry behaviour, it's easier to move the parents.

 

[Innesfan]

so, to catch babies, requires unscaping???

I generally don't catch babies. If the colony gets too large, I net out some adults. The latter situation occurs more for killies than Nannostomus.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I mostly bred plecos. When I started with zebras the tank was bare bottom which worked fin. However, as I expanded to more species, I used a sand bottom.

I wok with groups from 6 to 15 fish mostly. Plecos need caves and they need to hide. The females do not claim caves but may hide in them or under rock and wood. So my breeding tanks were heavily scaped. Since the offspring tend to grow faster in the breeder tanks they were left there until they had to be moved,

When the time to remove fish came I had to completely remove everything from the tank. Often I had to raise heaters as the fish wanted to hide anyway they could. Filter intakes were often removed as were the Poret cubefilters etc.

Over the years I had to break a few caves apart to get out stubborn males who would sprad their fectoral fins making them ompossible to pull out without cause serious damage.

In some cases I would pull a cave with dad and not yet free swimming offspring to a grow tank. When I did this, after the dad booted the kids, I would leave him in the grow tank and let him eat for a week. Then I would nab him in the cave and return it to the breeder tank.

Over the year I had a few cory spawns and I always pulled the eggs from wherever the fish put them and allowed them to hatch in a smaller bare bottom tank. I did the same with the few angel spawns I got but they laid close to 500 eggs and I could not hhandle that many every few weeks and switched to Altums which did not spawn for me.

As noted by GaryE, the hows and whys of breeding layputs are usually species dependent.

 

[EmmaS]

My favourite method of breeding fish is in a tank with lots of plants and some wood. I also cover the bottom with lava rocks which are fairly big in size. The eggs get trapped between the rocks.My cryptocorynes and stem plants are in pots for easy removal. All my plants can be removed quickly and easily as they are not grown in substrate.
You cannot beat lots of algae and other microorganisms in an established tank.
Guppy grass is the king of plants in a fry tank. I let it run wild along with floating plants.
I simply stick the fish in here I want to breed for a few days and feed them twice a day then pull them out.
Its very easy to catch them out as the contents of my aquarium can be emptied in15 mins minus the rocks on the bottom.
There is no substrate like sand or gravel. I might add an oak leaf or two.
I don't even bother to feed the fry for the first month as there is plenty of food in my setup
Once fry are big enough to be moved to a new home I empty the tank again including rocks and clean the bottom. Only for detritus. I never clean the glass side walls of algae.
I never break down my planted breeding tank. I have no snails in any of my aquariums but they all have shrimp which keep the beneficial bacteria going.
I love breeding fish and selling them. Unfortunately ebay has ended the selling bit of the hobby
I only breed when I want to boost my population or to see if i can actually breed them.
The only time I feed fry from an early stage are apistogrammas.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

@EmmaS​

I have been breeding and selling plecos since 2003 and the really pricey ones since Feb. 2007. I have never sold them at auction, I am not on any social media and I have never had a website. Consider posting on forums, consider selling on Aquabid.com as well.

I also used to sell at weekend events either in the vendor room or from my hotel room where room sales were allowed. This was good for promoting what I did to the people who attended such events. uchg of my buyers came to me via word of mouth.

 

[GaryE]

High end, fancy plecos are a whole other world. The rules there don't always relate to what hobbyists who prefer other fish experience. If you have the skills and set up to produce such sought after fish, things work differently, especially in the US hobby. Loracarids are where the bigger spenders of the hobby live.

Those of us who breed dwarf Cichlids, killies, Characins, barbs or other small stuff have a different experience altogether. I'm breeding a lovely dwarf Cichlid no one else in North America has, and can't move the young. I'm off the beaten track in a country where shipping costs way more than most expensive fish do. The USA shut its doors years ago.

I imagine losing online markets really hurts in a small country like the UK, as it does in a geographically big one like Canada. Fish auctions are the only way for a lot of us to get a better price than store credit at a small local shop.