Small scale breeding project.

[SAChichlidLover]

Prepared foods are whatever you buy at the pet shop that your fish like. I got along great for years on the standard flakes and frozen brine shrimp diet. There's so much more variety now that it is almost impossible not to have something good to feed. Big cichlids really like frozen krill.

Ahh okay I'll try and lean the fry over to my tetra flakes as they are usually sold everywhere

 

[SAChichlidLover]

The best money I every made breeding fish was Whiptail catfish. They are easy and worth a bomb. The next best is pygmy catfish followed by Black Angels ( but they have to be pure blacks ). I always wanted to breed Pantadon Butterfly's because I think they would be a great seller and once you nutted out spawning they would be easy.

I'll note that down. Thanks so much for your advice!

 

[SAChichlidLover]

Or sell $30 such as a Plecostomus "Green Dragon" Longfin from Select Aquatics. Another factor to consider, the cost of shipping if you have to sell your fish online. For myself, the shipping cost for a Green Dragon would be ~$50. Most likely I would buy 3 of them, now this fish cost ~$46/each with a total bill of $140.

View attachment 128473
Assumed Copyright of Select Aquatics

Oooh very nice pleco! And shipping costs can be a right pain depending on the place

 

[Colin_T]

Don't waste your time with central American cichlids like convicts. They pump out thousands of babies and don't sell.

Some of the African Rift Lake cichlids are fine. Get a group of peacocks (just 1 variety) and have 1 male and 5 or 6 females. Put them in a tank with 5 or 6 electric yellow cichlids and sell all the young you produce.
You can put a group of Synodontis multipunctatus in with these cichlids and the catfish will breed with the cichlids and you get a baby catfish to sell.

Geophagus aren't worth breeding because you can't sell them. You might sell 10 here and 10 there but you end up with 500 sitting in the tank.

The best cichlids to breed are angelfish and Apistogramma cacatuoides.

--------------------
Get a couple of species of rainbowfish and breed them. Melanotaenia lacustris, M. boesemani, M. praecox and Glossolepis incisus are worth breeding and you can sell heaps of them.

--------------------
Don't waste your time with common livebearers like guppies, platies, swordtails and mollies because the shops buy them in for half the price it costs you to grow them up.

--------------------
Get a couple of species of Corydoras and let them live in the tanks. They will breed regularly when mature and you can sell any that you produce. Go for more unusual Cories and look for colourful types or ones with patterns. Corydoras sterbai, robinae, panda, barbatus, etc.

--------------------
Zebra ancistrus and a few other types of small suckermouth catfish can be kept. They don't breed that much but you can sell any that are produced, and they usually command a good price.

--------------------
Have some unusual plants in the tanks and sell them too. Twisted Vallis, Ambulia, Hydrilla, red sword plants, etc can all be grown and while you won't sell them every week, you can usually get a few decent batches every year and it adds to the profit.

You can also grow plants and fish outdoors during the warmer weather.

--------------------
Are the tanks going to be on double or triple tier stands?

Perhaps have a couple of smaller tanks instead of 6 big tanks. Otherwise get some plastic dividers for the big tanks so you can separate prs (assuming they need to be on their own).

If you have a lot of tanks in the same room, it is often easier to insulate the room and heat that, rather than having lots of individual heaters running to each tank.

You can also have one big air pump and run some pvc pipe around the top of the room, then put small metal airline taps into the pipe and hang airline down into the tanks. You can use air operated sponge filters, box filters or undergravel filters. This is a cheaper way to filter the tanks and costs less in the power bill department.

--------------------
Start culturing your own live foods. It's easy to do and provides a source of nutrition to the adults and babies.

Back to Basics when Breeding Fish

STARTING OUT Make sure you have a pair, (1 male + 1 female). There is nothing worse than spending your hard-earned dollars buying a couple of fish to try and breed and ending up with a pair of fish of the same sex. Let's face it, to reproduce fish you need a male and a female. Two males won't do...

www.fishforums.net