Breeding Goldfish

[Silverdollarboy2]

Hi,i'm asking this on behalf of a friend:

what kind of outdoor setup do you need to breed goldfish,and also how to breed them and food.

[Yellow]

Live food helps. Daphnia, chopped earthworms etc.

Submersed plants with fine leaves helps eggs and fry avoid being eaten as well as being a surface that can grow microorganisms that bigger organisms (like rotifers and copepods) can graze off, which newly-hatched goldfish fry can eat.

Which reminds me, does anyone culture those really small waterfleas (moina and ceriodaphnia)? Newly-hatched Daphnia carinata are small enough for guppy fry but not for any other fry.

[kiwiraka]

I just scoop the fry out of the big trough and put them in tubs, I feed them wrigglers, crushed flakes and little black bugs (like daphnia only smaller and beatle like) Easy :thup:

I only have a low output though, it's not a very efficient method

[Silverdollarboy2]

Thanks for the info

[Colour_genes]

I used to breed oodles of goldfish, and sell them to the lps, with the following set-up.

2 x old bathtubs with adult breeding stock in, spawning materials (plants, or artificial - like bunches of string/wool, nylon potscrubbers etc, almost anything non-toxic will work, goldfish aint fussy :lol: ) hung at the sloping end. Thin layer of gravel in bottom of tubs.

2 x 2-3m diameter plastic swimming pools about 50 - 70 cm deep, (cheap ones from the big red place or similar did the trick for me). Fill these with water, a few plants, and chuck in a few hand-fulls of straw, or dried grass or similar. Leave for a few weeks and the pools will go green with algae & infusoria , and then hopefully Daphnia will also show up (or go get a starter culture form somewhere).

In the meantime, condition your breeding stock with plenty of good food, they should then spawn, collect as many eggs as possible & dump them straight into the green pool. When the eggs hatch, if you have timed everything right, the fry will start by munching the algae & infusoria, then the daphnia-bloom as soon as they are big enough, growing like rockets as they do.

Then wean them onto flake or crumble food (if you can get hold of the crumble that they feed salmon fry in the hatcheries, that works brilliantly). Feed as much as they will eat, and start doing major water changes in your pools at least once a week at this stage - the water is going to get real messy! Water changes needed in the tubs as well of course.

Once the babies are big enough, sell or select or whatever, clear out the swimming pool, refill & start all over again.

This really only works for the single-tail goldfish (comets, shubunkin etc), fancy tails are better off in a tank.

MOST Important: Build a framework around the ponds & tubs and cover the whole lot in shadecloth / windbreak mesh / bird netting or wire netting. But so you can still access the ponds of course. No mesh or netting = no baby (or adult) fish & really well-fed local birds & cats. :gigl:

Hope that gives your friend some ideas.

[Ira]

Hi,i'm asking this on behalf of a friend:

what kind of outdoor setup do you need to breed goldfish,and also how to breed them and food.

"A friend..." Comeon, no one ever believes that. I know you're ashamed of wanting to breed goldfish but you just need to accept it and come out of the closet...

:slfg:

[kiwiraka]

you just need to accept it and come out of the closet...

Just like you ira?

[Ira]

Just like you ira?

I'm too fabulous to EVER be in the closet about my aquatic preferences.