Subject: Re: [RML] Breeding
From: Scott Davis (unclescott at prodigy.net)
Date: Fri Dec 17 2004 - 12:39:01 CST
>I would like to know how can I breed them ?
Your help will be highly appreciated.
Hi Balik!
You already are breeding them. Well, actually they are
doing the breeding. ;)
If you can tell the males from the females (something
they can figure out before we can) they are mature
enough to procreate, even if they will get larger and
produce even more tiny eggs later in life.
Rainbowfish, especially of the same genus have a
strong tendency to cross. Please don’t save fry from
crosses. I’d bet lunch you could get Melanotaenia
boesemani x Mel. Praecox crosses. I’m not sure if you
could as successfully cross either of those with
Iriatherina werneri (your featherfins) or the less
closely related Bedotia madagascariensis (what has
been called geayi by us for a long, long time).
You want to set up your pairs or the quartet in a tank
of their own. You could feed them well for a couple of
days, letting them spawn on plants and then return the
adults to the community tank. You could also make an
acrylic mop (such as is used by killifish or goldfish
breeders) and let the rainbows have a go at that. The
eggs can be picked, but more often (and probably more
wisely) are just moved to a hatching tank or the
adults are returned to their previous residence.
This can involve a lot of tanks. You may have opened
Pandora’s box. Welcome to the Rainbowfish Mailing
List. ;)
(I can see the meeting now, involving many from this
list. “My name is _____ and I’m a rainbowfish
addict.”)
Greenwater will benefit the very small fry. That
greenwater needs to be well lit and moving in at least
a modest current. (I use small filters without any
filter medium to keep the water moving.) Leaving them
with a lot of plants gives them opportunity to forage
for live microfoods such as rotifers. One would also
want to feed them a microfood such as APR or the Tetra
Egglayer Food. Placing a few pond snails in the tank,
after the eggs have hatched, to clean up uneaten food.
If you are used to hatching baby brine shrimp, when
they grow to the size they can take them, feed them
the new-born b.b.s. Don’t overfeed them the brine
shrimp unless you’d like to fiddle with curing
freshwater velvet. ;) (See also the post here on
adult foods just a day or so back.)
Give them as much growing space as you can and be
faithful with your partial water changes. A number of
comparisons can be made between spawning and raising
killifish and rainbowfish. Rainbows are less forgiving
than most killies (or most livebearers) about dirty
water or cramped quarters.
A current is certainly appreciated. I found my
Madagascar rainbows and the praecox unusually tolerant
(for rainbows) of fry, if the adults were well fed.
Here were these very young Madagascars cruising along
not at all far from the power intake! You will want to
take a jar, skim those fry off of the surface and
place them in the own tank, just previously filled
with water from the parent’s tank.
There are several useful books on rainbows. You might
do a search at your local public library and see what
their computer turns up in their library or at
affiliated libraries. (I’m American and can really
only speak for library systems in Illinois.) There is
a pretty good chance (around here) that you can borrow
several of the titles and decide what you might like
to buy. (“Dear Santa, Hurry!”)
I would especially recommend:
Rainbowfishes by Gerald, R. Allen (no longer produced
by Tetra Press, but there are copies around.)
Breathtaking Rainbows by Harro Hieronimus (AquaLog)
All Rainbows and Related Families also by Harro
Hieronimus (AquaLog)
Rainbowfish Complete Owner's Manual by Gunther
Schmida, Renate Holzner (published by Barrons)
The Baensch Atlases also feature them, but they are
spread out in several volumes, esp. vol. 2 & 3.
A Google search will turn up several sites about
rainbowfish. It is no mistake that Andrew Tappin’s
http://members.optushome.com.au/chelmon/
is the first hit. Go inhale it.
Allen was unable to get some ID mistakes changed by
the publsiher. Those will be found at
http://www.rainbowfishes.org/AllenErrata.html
You will want to check around that site too.
This list recently migrated to Yahoo from an
Australian site where it “did rainbowfish proud.”
I have a question for other list members. Will there
be a link to the archives for the old site? Will those
post be available somewhere? They contain a wealth of
information and are just plain fun to read.
All the best!
Scott
: Tue Jan 04 2005 - 17:49:02 CST