Most tetras are easy to breed but neons and cardinals are hard to hatch the eggs and raise the fry.
Black Phantom or rosy tetras are easy to breed, as are Emperor tetras. Male Black Phantom tetras have black fins all round whereas the females have red pelvic fins. Male Rosy tetras have a bigger dorsal fin. Male Emperors have blue eyes and females have green eyes.
Buy a group of 6-10 fish and keep them together for a couple of weeks. Feed them 3 times a day with frozen, live and dry foods. Prawn and mozzie larvae are the best foods but the main thing is to feed them until they are full.
Make sure you do regular water changes and have good filtration to keep the water clean.
After a couple of weeks of good feeding the fish should be in breeding condition. Now you separate the males and females for 5 days. Then put a pr of fish into the breeding tank in the evening. The following day remove the fish. The fish should breed in the morning but will sometimes continue breeding through out the day. Wait until you no longer see any breeding behaviour before removing them.
The breeding tank can be 18-24inches long x 10-12inches wide x 12inches high. Have it filled with clean water that is soft and neutral to slightly acidic. The water doesn't have to be too different to the water in the main tank. The only tetras that need really soft acid water are neons, cardinals, and rummynose tetras, or wild caught stock.
Have some fine leaf plants like Java Moss in the tank, an airstone, and a small air operated sponge filter in the tank. Don’t have a light on the tank.
Once the fish have bred and been removed from the tank, cover the tank with a towel or something to prevent light getting into it. Leave the tank covered for a couple of days and when you see fry hanging from the sides of the tank, you can remove the cover. But don't have a light on the tank or have the tank in a brightly lit area.
When the fry start swimming around you start feeding them on fry foods like liquid fry or infusoria.
