ever since my 1st experience of fish breeding i have been fascinated with it and if i had more room and more tanks i would concentrate almost completely on helping my fish produce babies.

my 1st exerience was when i 1st bought some guppies. one morning before lights on i noticed a female guppie looking a bit lethargic and sitting in a quiet corner of the tank. i watched her wondering if she was ill after a few minutes i could litteraly see her straining and to my amazement a tiny little fish popped out of the mum and imediately started to swim. WOW! thought i, so i quickly grabbed a cup of tea and sat down to watch more and see what happened. a few minutes later another one popped out, then another then another. maybe 20-30 in total. i spent most of the rest of the day having occasionl looks at the tank to see what was happening. the mum didnt birth any more that day and initialy i was worried that mum or her tank mates might try eat the babies. thankfully though the fact that i had fed the guppies well and provided plenty of hide aways for the babies they almost all seemed to survive.

in more recent times i have had a little bit of success with breeding black neons and more recently with blue rams. the rams especialy were fascinating to watch. i saw mum and dad ram clean a flat stone that i had provided and then watched them lay and fertalise the eggs. when the wrigglers hatched daddy ram moved them to a pit in the sand that he and the mother had dug. funny watching them dig holes, shimmying fom side to side and sand flying everwhere. once the babies were hatched mum lost interrest but daddy ram was a great father. he would take the swarm of tiny fry about the tank looking for food. every few minutes he would see a straggler, run after it, catch it in his mouth and rushing back to the group he would spit it back out to join the group again.

at the moment i am not trying to breed any of my fish as it is harder for me to look after the breeding tanks just now. but i am sure i wll try to breed them more in the near future.

apart from the difficulties of raising the fry the most important thing i find in getting fish to breed is feeding them a good mix of foods, keeping the water clean and healthy and providing the right surroundings, particularly plants and rocks. plants seem to play a large part in the process from helping to feed the fry (java moss does this) to just providing secluded spots for the fish to lay the eggs.

in recent times i have seen my blackwidow tetra and tigers barbs (which i no longer have) aswell as my black neons breed in the community tanks. unfortunately the eggs never survive in the community tank as they are soon eaten. again when i have time i plan to try putting some of my black neons in their own breeding tank and see if i can have more success with them.

plus even my guppies, i have one female and a male just now, still fascinate me, even if they are the easiest to breed. as i write this my female is in my 10g tank with a lot of java ferns and she is ready to burst again. i can see 2 little babies swimming around and the female is fat as anything and lurking about the plants looking like she is ready to drop more.

i just thought i'd share this with u all in the hope that some of u enjoy my fishy tales (deliberate pun) and also that some of u might join me in sharing ur experiences of the 'miracle of birth'

I don't have any fishy miracles of birth - but I have bred hamsters.

the day I saw the tiny babies I nearly fainted.... it is an unreal experience. they are small and pink - so tiny. you can see where their eyes will be, their little ears.

I watched them very closely, as they gained whiskers, claws, and pretty soon fur. I watched as they learned to open their eyes, and as they akwardly cralwed around their cage, the mother always guiding them back to the nest. they soon learned to make a break for the food dish while their mother wasn't looking - grab some food, and get back to the nest before the mother even noticed. one litter even learned to do this while still blind!

the mother would snatch them up in her mouth and cart them back to the nest, only to have them crawl out again. when they became big enough, she didn't even bother with them, but they always came back to her. I loved watching this, but I am sure the mother got very annoyed...lol

they had tiny paws, equipped with miniscule pads, and little claws... every detail about them was amazing - from their helples pink stage of nursing to when they were finally ready to leave mom.

I am so glad to have done this - this is something I wil keep forever!

I hope to breed guppies... but that is quite a while off.

i didnt think this thread would solicit a hamster story ... it is still nice to hear it tho.

along similar lines, i came home after a night out yrs ago, when i was still at my parents. i was met by my mum looking worried. she handed me some cigarettes and practicaly pushed my into a room, that a pregnant female cat was in, saying 'that the cat was having problems'.

i had a look at the cat and could see that she looked as if she was in labour and was struggling. after a while i realised that one of the kittens was in the breach position and wasnt coming out to the distress of the moher cat. so more by instinct that knowledge i went and washed my hands and then used a couple of fingers to gently push the legs of the kitten back into the mother, i even managed to help turn the kitten around into the correct birthing position. a moment or 2 later 'pop' out came a kitten. a few mins later another one then another. she had 4 healthy kittens and i felt proud if not slightly rattled that i'd managed to help and possibly save the lives of the mother and kittens

Sorry guy's, I'm a farm kid, so anything birthing like Dogs, Cats, Sheep, Cattle, etc 'Yawn!'. But I have seen a Calf with two heads!

Our current collection of Guppies, come from when the kids asked me about baby fish, so we bought a couple to demonstrate how it all works (at least for Livebearers). But it certainly is interesting to watch the Female squeeze out a few. Here a pic of Guppy Fry, showing a couple of new-borns, that haven't straightened out yet. It always amazes me that so many can be packed in there!

oh u poor jaded fellow

I'm quite interested in that you've bred Barb's, and Tetra's. I'd always been under the impression that was rather difficult in home aquariums, and was more the realm of Cichlids, Live-Bearers, and Catfish. What sort of population do you need to ensure that sort of thing? And are there any particular Tetra's, that are more easier bred?

i think as u said about ur corys breeding Peter, my fish breed more by providence than anything specific i do or try to do. although ofcourse there are a few things i do that have probably helped.

i am not sure about what tetras are easier to breed than others, apart from that blue and black neons are supposed to fall into the slightly easier catagory. i've read that black widows and tiger barbs are medium difficult to breed.

i have seen my black neon tetras, black widow tetras and tiger barbs all lay eggs in the community tanks. the ones i have seen lay eggs the most are the black neons and are the only ones, apart from my rams, that have had surviving babies.

i havent taken notes unfortunately but i can roughly relate what i've seen and done.

i have two 40g tanks, one in an alcove to the side of my living room and one that sits right in the middle of the room that is visible from 3 sides. i tend to see more breeding in the centre tank but this may be due to the fact that i can see in it more before the lights come on. this tank gets indirect light from the sun rising where as the alcove tank is hard to see into before the lights come on. altho i have also read and seen that breeding seems to be triggered by the morning light. this is always when i see breeding, between dawn and lights on (apart from the rams, they bred at night). the breeding does continue after lights on sometimes, but this tends to happen more in the alcove tank, which kinda makes sense as the fish in this tank are not getting as much light as early on as the other tank.

i roughly do 25% water changes every week or 50% fortnightly depending if i have time or not. i cant realy say if this triggers them or not as i've seen them breed before, after and inbetween changes.

the black neons, when they are in the mood, seem to lay eggs every few days. i have seen them lay on consecutive days but other times its been on alternate days with a rest day between.

the chemistry in my tanks is roughly the same. both 26c, one has a ph about ph6.6 - 6.8 and the other tends to be ph6.8 - 7. i have seen the fish breed after i have moved them from one tank to another. so this may be a trigger but again i cant be sure as it has happened both ways, from lower to higher ph and vice versa. both tanks have very soft water. the gh is near enough zero in both. the co2 added tank and thus slightly more acidic has a higher kh 3-4 degrees, the non co2 tank its zero kh.

the little success i had, with my black neons, was when i took some out of the main tanks and used a breeding tank. the tank i used is a 6gal when filled to the top, measuring roughly 18" x 10" x 10" with a fluval 1 internal box filter, same temp (26c) as main tanks and initialy with the same water (taken from the larger tank that housed the fish). the 1st time i set it up it was bare apart from a few tank ornaments like a cannon and a castle for the fish to take refuge in if they wanted too. i put in 4 fish, 2 males and 2 fat females. they bred in it but by the time i realised and removed the adults, they had eaten nearly all the eggs. the eggs that did survive, few of them hatched and none of the fry survived. on the second attempt, same tank with no furniture but instead i covered the bottom of the tank losely with about 2 inches of java moss. this was to stop the adults getting to the eggs which mostly worked as i noticed them eating a few but most of the eggs survived and i removed the adults as soon as i realised there was eggs in the tank.

of the eggs that were left, maybe 20-30, about 10 hatched, but only 3 survived beyond a day or 2. of these 3 i managed to get 2 to survive to adulthood and i still have them.

the reasons i had so few survive is probably due to a few factors. some of the eggs were affected by fungus, i didnt add methelene blue after i removed the parents but next time i will. i dont think i was changing the water often enough, i was only changing about 10% every 2-3 days, 10% ever day is probably better. plus i dont think i was providing enough food, or the right food. when i removed the parents i removed all the java moss, which i wont do the next time as this can provide a lot of food for the fry in the form of micro organisms. i did add liquid infusora, which did promote micro organismsm aswell as some powdered food, but these probably poluted the water a bit too. also at the time i didnt have baby brine shrimps or shelled brine shrimps eggs, both of which my ram fry loved. plus next time i am going to get a micro worm hatchery and use these aswell, as they are ment to be great for rearing fry.

one thing i didnt mention, i'm sure u know (regarding breeding condition), is that i feed my fish quite well with a varied diet. they get different types of flake, pellets, dried blood worm, dried tubiflex, shelled brine shrimp eggs and occasionaly live brine shrimp.

so as u can see from what i've just writen i have made more mistakes than right moves, but i intend to try again soon having learned from the mistakes.

wow this is a long post and i need to go get a cup of tea now, lol. i think it kinda answers ur main question Peter and a few others u didnt ask. if u do what i did right and do the opposite of what i did wrong then i am sure u stand a very good chance of having success urself.

to finish here are some pics of the neon tetra fry.

fry at 5 days old ...







fry at 3 weeks old ...

The Girls, and myself, all love the pics!

My breeding tank gets a touch of morning sun depending on the time of year. They generally lay in the morning, but there are exceptions. They laid this morning in fact! All going white tho'... Was it Clunkster that said 'keep 'em clean, well fed, and happy' ? ..and they'll deliver the goods.

I think I've really got too much of an overstocked tank to really be serious about Tetra breeding. I'm sure the Angels will do ok, and I suspect the next Keyhole batch, I'll be able to salvage. But you've now let me know that it's possible, so I can look forward to it in the future (with another 20 tanks!!!).

Are the Tetra fry as small as Rams? And do you need a food that stays suspended in the water? Feeding Cory's is easy, the food lands right in front of their nose! Even the Liquid Fry food I have, seems to fall to the floor. The Java Moss seems the way to go. Get them through those critical first few days.

the fry and eggs were absolutely tiny to start with, way smaller than the ram eggs and fry, and see thru too. they looked like tiny little splinters of glass at 1st. not easy to spot at all. thankfully i have an 8x photo magnifying loop which helped.

they did eat some of the suspended food but i noticed they tended to hang near the bottom or the sides of the tank a lot and hunt down micro organisms. i would see the fry dart after little 'specks' of food.

one thing i didnt mention in the last post is that i knew when my tetras etc were breeding as they would start to dash about, all over the tank and especialy amongst the plants. basically the males would chase the female/s and rub against them, if the females felt like it they would get next to or between plants and as they released the eggs the males would fertilise them. it is a good idea i think to provide a hiding place or two for the female/s as they seem to get very tired by all the chasing and appear to need to stop and hide occasionaly to catch their breath and get a break from the amorous males.