Fish Breeding

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People mostly don’t have fish tanks for breeding purposes, since they like to watch them acting like in the wild. However, a natural part of life in nature is breeding. Of course, some aquarists breed fish for money too. Taking care of any fish could be relatively expensive and breeding is one way to get invested money back. Naturally, there are specialized fish keepers who breed various fish species for a living. Moreover, some of professional fish breeders are very specialist and they try to ’create’ new species or new colour variants, and some of them try to keep species in danger alive for next generations.

Anyhow, even if it might look easy, fish breeding is not as easy as it seems. Nearly all fish species require special conditions for breeding, otherwise they eat their eggs, newborns, or other fish will eat them this is the most common reason why newborns die.

There are numerous factors affecting readiness for breeding. The best way to breed your fish is to copy the conditions which they need to breed exactly (usually like they have in nature), in the tank. These factors include, but don’t limit to, pH, dH, temperature, food and light conditions. Conditions in in a fish´s natural environment change according to the seasons of the year which means more food, higher temperatures in one season than in another. This is the reason they breed at special times ­ as everyone they want to breed when newborns have enough food and suitable conditions for growth.

The most important impulse for fish from rivers near the equator is when water temperatures get lower than usual. It is because they breed in season, when there is much rain and the rain cools the water. Then the rivers flood and fish can naturally find more food. The easiest way to imitate such conditions is to warm up the water for few months on 30 or 32°C (bear in mind your fish’s requirements, since such temperatures may lead to unpredictable deaths of non-tropical fish species!!!) and then cool it down to 25 or 27°C for a few days. Rain might cause changes in the water chemistry too. It includes pH and water hardness level. That is how fish know it is time to breed. Unlike tropical fish, fish which come from moderate climate zones breed after changes in lightness. The amount of light is not very important for fish living in tropical climate zones, because the light there is almost the same throughout the year. Food plays a very important role in breeding. Naturally, fish breed when there is enough food (use live food for tank-kept fish) for them as well as well as their babies. It is because that live food has many vitamins and maybe fish are stimulated because they can hunt when the conditions are similar to the conditions in nature.

First, you should forget about guarantees on general suggestions on fish breeding, since there are no exact rules how to make them reproduce for sure. It simply means that everything that you have heard or read may be not true. Every fish is an individual and nobody told them how they should act or, in our case, breed. They act how they feel. That is the reason why you can find homosexual couples too. It is a usual scenario, if there aren´t enough opposite sex partners. But when they find any, they become heterosexuals again. Some fish are hermaphroditic and some fertilize themselves. A very interesting species is Poecilia formosa. It is a narural hybrid between Poecilia latipinna and Poecilia mexicana. This fish requires a male of one of those species in order to produce babies. However, each child is a female. Moreover, any male doesn´t give her any genetic material. Basically, there are many,many mother’s clans.

The basic division of fish according to their breeding habits is spawners and livebearers. Then we divide fish according to how they take care of their fry. Livebearers give birth to their fry once the fry is able to care for themselves alone. The female feeds the fry inside her body until they are able to survive alone. Unlike livebearers, the fry of spawners are powerless when they are born. That’s why spawners have so many eggs. More eggs mean more fish which can survive. Some spawners have not so much eggs, since they protect them until they’re able to survive, or they hide them. According to this we can divide spawners into egg-layers, mouth-brooders and bubble nest builders.

Egg-layers don´t breed very easily in the tank, because they may eat their own eggs, or the eggs can be easily eaten by other fish. Even though they try to hide the eggs, usually there aren’t enough places where it is impossible for other fish to find eggs easily. This is the reason why it’s best to separate parents and put them into an aquarium where they can be alone and after they breed successfully, move them back to their home aquarium. When the eggs hatch, they need special food. They can´t be fed normal food for adults, because they can´t eat it; Newborns are too small. Only after they grow up a bit can they eat crushed food. If you want to breed egg-layers, the worst choice of filter is the ground filter, because small eggs can be sucked into the filter and killed. The best substrate is about one centimeter big round rocks or glass rocks. The eggs can easily fall between them and the small fellas are safe. Some egg-layers bury eggs, or they make a small hole for them. In order to give you an example, let’s talk about Angelfish a bit; Breeding the Angelfish species might be easy, but sometimes some problems occur, such as the partners are two females and they both release eggs. In this case, the eggs are not fertilized, so they can´t hatch and they turn to fungus. Discus fish take care of their Newborns in a very interesting way. The mother produces a kind of slimy liquid and the babies swim around and feed on it.

The major part of mouthbrooders are cichlid species. A mouthbrooder is a kind of fish which defends it’s eggs. When appropriate the mother usually collects the little buddies into her mouth, or she collects the eggs and the male’s sperm in her mouth. It is the best way to be sure, that all the little guys are fertilized. But mouthbroodeers, like all cichlids (Angelfish and Discus are cichlids too), are relatively difficult to breeed because they chose partners; they will not breed with every fish. And if they don’t breed, you don’t have any other choice, only to get/buy a new male or female and to hope that your old cichlid will like him or her better than the first one.

The speciality of bubble nest builders is, as the name says, building bubble nests. Those nests are made from males saliva. A typical bubble nest builder fish is the Betta splendens, Paradise fish or Gourami. First, the male (possibly together with female) builds the nest, then he gets the eggs out of the female, puts them into the nest and then fertilizes them. When the eggs hatch, the little guys are powerless and the male even has to get them back into the nest, so they can breath. The male defends the nest against the female all the time, until his children are big enough.

Livebearers can be divided into groups too. To be exact, into two groups. The real livebearers and pseudo-livebearers. The real livebearers´ fry are fed inside of the female, from blood circulation, but pseudo-livebeaers´ fry are fed inside an egg which is inside of the mothers belly. The most common livebearer is the guppy fish and swordtail.

Fish Breeding

has been viewed times since June 30, 2009.