Ice222 Posted April 28, 2011 Report Share Posted April 28, 2011 Epsom tap water must be fairly nice for breeding fish! I did a bit of reading on harlequins when I bought these the other day and they're supposed to be quite hard to breed. I've had them for all of THREE DAYS and this morning I found them doing the upside down under the leaf dance, so I sat and watched, sure enough after a few times they spawned for real. I wasn't able to harvest the eggs, since the usual method of sucking them up with a turkey baster does not work with these sticky eggs, but next time I should have a few eggs to boast about :happy1:. I have water softness at about 2.3dGH if I remember correctly, that's just all from water out the tap though, no peat, and only year old pieces of driftwood in there. The PH is at neutral, and their food is just NLS small fish formula so I'm not doing anything special. One thing I would change if I was seriously trying to breed them though is to have a higher male to female ration. I think I have 1 male to 4 females. He'd chase and get one under the leaf, but as soon as he sees another female out of the corner of his eye, he'd go chase her instead leaving the first gal dancing under the leaf by herself. At one point he had 3 girls all under the leaf and still went off to chase the last one :roll:. Also thank you Dreams for the green tiger lotus! They love it and that's what they were spawning under . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sophia Posted April 29, 2011 Report Share Posted April 29, 2011 I saw those fish for the first time a few weeks ago :nfs: are you still breeding your CPDs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted April 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2011 Not breeding the CPDs atm as the breeding tank is full. The first batch are pretty much adult size now though, but I need to set up my big tank before I have the room to breed them again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sophia Posted April 29, 2011 Report Share Posted April 29, 2011 thinking of selling any perchance? :spop: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted April 29, 2011 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2011 How many would you be after? There are a few of them I definitely want to keep but since I haven't had the time to setup my big display tank, I might sell a few and just spawn the adults again if I want more numbers :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshlikesfish Posted April 29, 2011 Report Share Posted April 29, 2011 I want some of that Epsom water! Well done :thup: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted May 1, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2011 Found 3 eggs this morning on the green lotus (for some reason they lay them on the top and not the underside :roll:). They ate one when I tried to suck it out with the turkey baster and dislodged it instead, but I got the other 2 safely. Fingers crossed to see if they'll hatch. I'm pretty sure I see a few other eggs down in the Java Fern, but they're hard to reach so I'll just leave them. I do small water changes into the plastic baggie with the eggs every time i walk by, that will hopefully keep them viable . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted May 4, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2011 No luck with the 2 eggs I recovered. Not sure why, but when I found them, they were being nibbled on by what I assume were daphinia?! I've never heard anything about daphinia eating eggs, hopefully I'll get a chance to try again ,this time without any daphina and hopefully that'll work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted May 7, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2011 I have fry . I count 2, but several eggs I had in the baggie are missing so I think more may have hatched. They don't look much like fry though. Yellow head, like their eggs, with a tail and no eyes that I can see. Looks hugely different to cpds, the eggs looked similar - yellowish and small - but the CPD fry were mostly clear with a black spots as eyes. The rasboras only took about 24 hours to hatch while the cpds took 3-4 days in the same temp (25 degrees C). Several eggs got fungused, and I try to remove them quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshlikesfish Posted May 7, 2011 Report Share Posted May 7, 2011 :happy2: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted May 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 12, 2011 My 2 Fry are now free-swimmers :happy2:. Haven't managed to get more eggs as the fish have now got a habit of eating them straight away. Mostly because I have 1 male and all the females follow him around so when they do spawn the others rush in and eat the eggs. May go try buy a few more males soon, hopefully that'll help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-obstacle Posted May 12, 2011 Report Share Posted May 12, 2011 My 2 Fry are now free-swimmers :happy2:. Haven't managed to get more eggs as the fish have now got a habit of eating them straight away. Mostly because I have 1 male and all the females follow him around so when they do spawn the others rush in and eat the eggs. May go try buy a few more males soon, hopefully that'll help. Sweet news! would pay to check if they're harem breeders or not as if they are they only need the one male and adding more could just add aggression to the mix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted May 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 12, 2011 Sweet news! would pay to check if they're harem breeders or not as if they are they only need the one male and adding more could just add aggression to the mix. From what I could find on google, most seem to suggest breeding groups of 2 males to every female. At the moment I've got 4 females to 1 male, which is why I'd like to get at least 2 more males to balance the numbers out a bit. I'm not seriously breeding them, but would still like to give the fish a proper chance since I really like watching fry grow and I do have some room for more fish at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice222 Posted May 14, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2011 Found 5 eggs yesterday on a tiger lotus leaf that had disconnected from the stem. 3 went white while 2 hatched into fry today . Decided to float a plastic leaf in the tank, hoping they'll lay eggs on that too, as it'll be easier to move eggs from that than trying to reach leaves on the bottom of the tank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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