Pregnant Half-beak

[sunrider]

I'm pretty sure my half-beak is pregnant. She has had a very extended abdomen for at least 3 weeks. Now the the male is swimming around underneath her, touching her abdomen with his beak - which I have read is spawning behaviour. What can I expect and what will I see?

Also, they are in a community tank with swordtails and bumblebee gobies. I haven't seen any hassles between species, will the swordtail eat the fry if there are any?

 

[sunrider]

No one has anything to offer? Can someone at least give me a general guide to the spawning process in live bearers? Should I move the halfies to a closed hatchery? If so, now or later?

 

[K.J.]

Swordtails and probably halfbeaks (if they're like common livebearers) will try to eat the fry. Depending on how many you get and what your tank looks like, however, it's very rare for none to survive. Got any tank pictures?

 

[sunrider]

HI KJ, thanks for your reply. The tank is 40 gallon. I have a pic but it's not on the web anywhere so I can't link to it... it's got quite a few live plants at the back, none reach quite to the surface. Also a couple of logs middle/front, with live plants on them and lots of hidey places in and around them. I plan to get some more plants today - some to reach to the surface, as I have read this is helpful for spawning. My main query is how to know when the female is ready to bear and whether to move her.

 

[K.J.]

Halfbeaks generlly carry for a longer amount of time, 6 weeks. But they have bigger batches; by the description you provided I can almost guarantee you at least 3 will survive. Do you have a digital camera? If so, you can download the pictures to http/www.tinypic.com and link them here by clicking the buttom above the text box with a little image of sun over a hill on it, right next to the smiley and the envelope sign.

 

[sunrider]

Halfbeaks generlly carry for a longer amount of time, 6 weeks. But they have bigger batches; by the description you provided I can almost guarantee you at least 3 will survive.

Thanks KJ. So (forgive me for being dense here).... spawning... the male is swimming round underneath her nudging her belly, which I read is spawning behaviour. Is this when she is impregnated or fertilised? Does that mean it's about 6 weeks from now? Or does it mean she is nearly ready to give birth?

Yay! Thanks for the link. Here is a pic... The wreck is going today, with new plants going in instead. I like what I see of planted tanks, but I'm still a beginner and getting the hang of everything, so it's a slow process.

 

[K.J.]

My platy just had fry. A couple days before the male would follow her around and rub his anal fin against her back or try to touch her belly, and then she dropped. Don't know much about halfbeaks but I imagine this applies to all fish. How long has she been looking fat? The tanks pretty well planted, look around in that cave thingy and on the roots of the tings attached to rocks, that was where mine liked to hide. If you don't want to take them out, I think they peck at the roots slightly, which seems to gather food pieces perfect for them, however I haven't done this yet. If you don't have any bottom feeders then they should just peck on all the flakes on the bottom after they've shredded from getting wet.

 

[K.J.]

I actually narrowed down the following to the fact that either a.) he knew she was close to dropping and wanted to eat the fry, b.) he knew she was close to dropping and saw the opportunity to mate again, and didn't want to miss it, or c.) she was secreting some sort of hormone that made him confuse it with a platy in "heat," although they can be impregnated at any time, or d) it was just a coincidence.

 

[mommyof2bettas]

Actually, they will almost always nudge at the bottom of the belly-it's a mating ritual and they don't do it only when the female is extremely pregnant. I don't know much about rare livebearers (you could try posting in the rare livebearer section). If halfbeaks give birth in about 6 weeks I guess you'd have to wait another 3 weeks, or maybe less. Once again, you could try posting in the rare livebearer section as I'm not too sure about rare livebearers.

 

[sunrider]

She's been looking fat for at least 2-3 weeks. Today her behaviour has changed a little again and she is swimming down off the surface from time to time, and at one stage was hiding back behind the filter pipe.

The LFS gave me a floating hatchery. It's about 15cm long. Is it worth putting her in this? With him or just by herself? I just wonder whether it's too confining, given that the two of them swim all over the surface all day long. OTOH if birth (what is the correct term - birth?) is imminent then maybe it is. She's quite tame - would probably just swim into it if I put my hand in the tank holding the hatchery.

I don't know what to do!

Edited to add: Thanks Mommyof 2Bettas, I will cross post.

 

[mommyof2bettas]

Don't ut her in the hatchery-she might get stressed and abort. Best to leave her there until she has her fry, then catch the fry and move them to the hatchery.

 

[sunrider]

Excellent - thanks for that, that was one of my main questions.

 

[mommyof2bettas]

You should start looking in the tank more often now-check to see if her belly is even a little smaller and check for any fry hiding amogst the plants. I think some should survive, your tank seems to have enough hiding places.

 

[sunrider]

You should start looking in the tank more often now-check to see if her belly is even a little smaller and check for any fry hiding amogst the plants. I think some should survive, your tank seems to have enough hiding places.

I am actually pretty sure I saw her give birth to one, something definitely came out that looked like a baby, it floated down to the plants and is resting on a leaf, but is not moving at all. Dead? She is swimming down amongst the plants which she's never really done before. I will start looking! What will they look like? Are live young active straight away?

 

[nmonks]

Hello,

I've bred halfbeaks many times, and for the most part the fry are extremely easy to rear. The main problem is [a] getting the adults to coexist and making sure the female doesn't miscarry. It is very common for fry to be born a day or two early, and these fry invariably die. The problem is that when stressed, the females miscarry. Since the females are easily stressed, miscarriages are common. Among the things certain to cause miscarriages are breeding traps (don't even bring one into the same room as a female halfbeak!), aggressive tankmates, sudden changes in water chemistry, and the wrong diet.

The males are generally not a problem. Female halfbeaks are (when fully grown) something like twice the length of the males are more than hold their own. In fact, I've seen large females of one species eat small males of other species! Cannibalism of the fry is not very common in halfbeaks, at least, not in a large aquarium with plenty of floating plants. Floating plants are MANDATORY when breeding halfbeaks for a variety of reasons. They help the female feel secure, they stop the halfbeaks jumping, and they give a place for newborn fry to hide. Check each morning for new fry, and scoop them out to rear elsewhere. An 8-10 gallon tank is an ideal nursery tank for halfbeak fry. They are easy to feed, and will take pretty well any small live food. I simply collect pond water and let them eat the tiny animals in there. After a few days they will take finely powdered flake and frozen lobster eggs.

Healthy newborn fry swim to the surface and stay there. They are extremely capable swimmer and much larger than guppy fry. Newborn Nomorhamphus liemi fry are around 13 mm long, Dermogenys spp. fry a bit smaller. Any fry that aren't swimming at the top are likely miscarried and will die soon even if they aren't eaten by the other fish in the aquarium. The gestation period is around 6 weeks but this varies, especially with Dermogenys, which can produce fry in as little as 3 weeks.

I have a page about breeding halfbeaks, here:

http/homepage.mac.com/nmonks/aquaria/halfbeakbreeding.html

I hope that covers all the bases. Although halfbeaks are "livebearers", in many important ways they are very different to the Poeciliidae (guppies etc.) kept by most aquarists. Unfortunately, there isn't all that much in the aquarium literature about halfbeaks, and worse, much of what's there is erroneous (halfbeaks mostly don't need brackish water, for example, and the common species prefer soft/acid water conditions). One similarity they have with poecilids is the need for green foods in their diet. Use vegetarian rather than carnivore flake. On the other hand, one oddity with halfbeaks is declining fertility with age. Quite why no-one seems to know. But when kept in aquaria at least the successive broods get smaller and smaller until eventually they stop coming altogether. Halfbeaks are also rather delicate fish and do not live all that long (2-3 years at most) so setting up a "colony" is the way to go rather than sticking to just a single pair of fish.

Good luck!

Neale