Silver Dollar Breeding

[vancouver]

I'm quite sure 2 of my silver dollars are interested in breeding with each other.. They swim side by side almost constantly, and shimmy and shake all weird at each other... The other silver dollars just follow them around looking very curious..

I'm wondering if anyone's had any experiences breeding them?

It's a 75g tank with 6 silver dollars, among other cichlids, so the eggs will not survive if I leave them alone..

I'm curious though if anyone has any advice on how to separate them if I want to try to save eggs if they appear.. Should I put just the 2 in a tank by themselves, or the whole group?

 

[Castellop123]

Only put them in a seperate tank if your sure that they are in breeding condition... Add soft water to the breeding tank... a Ph of 6 - 7 and a Gh of 10 should be fine... The breeding tank should not be brightly lit... A kh below 4 is advised... If there were no cichlidsin the tank, the Dollars would simply leave the eggs and you would have been fine... The fry are free swimming within a week and attach themselves to the glass to feed on small plankton in that time...

 

[vancouver]

A couple of them have been getting black areas on them.. don't know if that has anything to do with breeding or not..

I'm going to put all the silver dollars in 1 tank and see if anything happens..

I don't know anything about kh or gh so will have to look those up..

Thanks for the info!

 

[Mice]

this is interesting i have 4 silver dollars and im trying to breed them.. how big are yours and how long have you had them. i wonder if they have to be a certain age or size to breed i only have a 30 gallon. give me some advice on what you've done to get to this point. and i think that the black dots are breeding dots if they are right behind the gill. that indicates the male i'm pretty sure.

 

[LisaLQ]

They should get two black dots on their side when they're in breeding condition, and the dominant male will get these the brightest (and our dominant male also turned reddish). I've not bred them purposefully before, but mine used to be at it like rabbits when we had the oscar tank

 

[vancouver]

3 of the 6 have the black spots.. do the black spots distinguish males from females? or do all SDs get them when in breeding condition?

1 of them is chasing the others around quite a bit.. shaking at some of them..

I'm moving all the SDs into their own tank tonight.

Here's a pic of some of them.. I circled the black areas.