I'm getting set up for a few fish projects this year. I want to breed my emperor tetra, kubotai rasbora, forktail and gertrudae rainbows, and apistogramma macmasteri. I would like to hear about everyone's breeding set ups or systems and what work's best for you for your different species. Some bullet points would be: age of fish when they start to spawn, size of tanks used, fish room set up for breeding area, equipment used (like breeder boxes), food used at different times during breeding/egg hatching/fry age stages, how you set up live food systems, culling points, age of fish when you begin to move them from one tank to another, age of fish when they are ready to sell, and how you decide what fish to sell vs what fish would be a good BAP project. I hope this stirs some conversation!
Not sure where to start, but the fish you are hoping to breed should be super popular! The variety makes it very difficult to directly answer some of those questions. Most of those fish, I don't believe need to grow over a year. Many fish do need a couple years to get to spawning age but I think those prob could all be done within 1 year. Study each species. Look at plecos. They are always grouped together but there are a lot of different feeding routines you need to follow, so its great to ask! That is my one piece of advice "Ask before you buy your fish!". Then get the temp, pH and hardness close to what the fish are normally used to. Buy from hobbyists when you can. Some fish just aren't available from hobbyists. Don't be afraid to ship in from a reputable breeder. Frequent water changes will greatly increase you success! Conditioning with good quality food is important too. Live foods can be helpful, but variety helps alot. Feeding all one type of live food can cause problems. Better to switch up with good quality flake, pellets,frozen food and live food.
Right now I have most of these species in 10-20 gallon set ups. I'm planning on building a wood rack that will hold up up to 6 10 gallon aquariums for grow outs. I have a Penn Plex nursery box to catch egg scatter eggs, caves for the apistos, and some spawning mops for the rainbowfish. Then breeder boxes on the sides of the parent tanks to raise the young. I did get myself a brine shrimp hatchery but growing multiple live food specimens is daunting. With the size of most of my fish I believe fry are too small to eat baby brine shrimp at first. I know nothing except what I've read or listened to online about fry care. Is there a good info website that will show the growth stages/timing per species?
This is early on, but what I've got is a 3 tier stand, 10 gallon tanks, penn plex nurseries, and fluval breeder boxes. At the moment I've only started the kubutai rasboras. I use the top rack for storage and my larger air pump, the middle are my breeding fish, and the bottom will be grow out tanks. I'm looking for any input into arranging things for max efficiency or best practices. It's easier to have the middle rack only have 2 tanks b/c of the breeder boxes. Some of my other species I'm working with have tanks in other spots and I plan on bringing the fry to the grow out tanks with they out grow the breeder boxes. I would like to connect my penn plex nursery by air to the breeder box to bring eggs up and deposit them there. I run out of air line outlets really quick. My new air pump does 6 lines and I think I could split those, but I don't know what I want to do quite yet. The nursery has java moss on top of a mesh grate covering the egg area. The goal is to attach this to the air intake tube to suck these eggs up and into the breeder box. Right now its not connected. The breeder box is set up to flow water from the main tank into the breeder box then back out. This is really noisy, a gluging sound, I don't know if it should not be that loud.
