>Red-finned Blue-eyes are not difficult to breed initially but tell the
>listmembers how many generations you were able to maintain and how many you
>have now. We all ( with very few exceptions) who have had them have a
>collection of hard-luck stories but to me it seems that there is something
>missing in the diet, water conditions etc that they need to keep the strain
>going - that's why they are only found there and haven't colonised the
>surrounding areas despite the fact that a recent arrival out there
>(Gambusis) has had no trouble doing the reverse.
We have also had our experience with the red-finned blue-eyes here in our
area. Some are still swimming, but no eggs, no fry. What seems to be the
reason? Well, the normal way you breed with rainbows is to breed with the
fish when they are nearly adults. Then you can be sure they spawn for several
months and you will have enough fry. If it becomes less, you keep the last fry for
yourself and normally that makes no problems. The red-finned blue-eyes now
seem to stop breeding at a certain people when you normally would say "they
are just getting adults". At that point you have already given away all of your
early fry and if you notice what really happens - you aren't getting any fry any
longer - the fry you gave away are already to old and the people didn't really
try to breed them as they seemed to be too young for that.
So if anybody again gets some of these fish he has to try to breed them as soon
as possible to have enough fry. And as Bruce said, getting eggs from the young fish
seems to be no problem yet. You have to breed them in a few very short generations
and you have to have many more (I'd propose 50 in three or four age stages in as
many tanks to have the spawning control) rainbows as usual to keep the stock running.
However, you won't be able to give away lots of fry but you will have a better chance
to save the fish at least in our aquaria.
BTW, who has still this fish and would be able to send a few eggs down to Solingen
in next June or July??
Harro