Breeding Silver Dollars

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Moonsparkle7

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 3, 2007
2
0
0
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Hello, I'm new here and seems like a cool place! :)

I would like any tips some of you may have regarding breeding of Silver Dollars. I am a angel and discus breeder, but have recently becomed interested in breeding these guys after seeing them "do a little dance" while I was watching tv. This is from my 180gal.

Here is a video I took yesterday if your curious: http://media.putfile.com/Silver-Dollar-Dance

These two keep chasing each other and every few minutes will "dance" with each other. I take this as fish language for getting ready to spawn. They will go off on their own and do this and then rejoin the school. This has been going on for a few days now and becoming more and more frequent.

So, what size tank you think I should place them in? I don't know if I should separate the school? There is only 4 of them for now until I get some more unless you count the two parrots who school along side with them 80% of the time. Should I leave the parents with the eggs? Any special plants I could add to help that are good for the dollars and that they won't eat? What food for the fry? I do feed my dollars beefheart, flakes, javamoss and assorted plants, lettuce etc... Should I continue? or is there something better for them when trying to breed them?

I'm not finding good resources online about breeding them so I am hoping maybe someone with experience resides this board can help or give some pointers in the very least. I'm not getting any responses from other fish forums......I'll take just about any info regarding this.

Thank you so very much!!!!!
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I have a group of three which spawned regularly for about 1 year (almost once a month). They are 4-5 years old now and were in a 29 gal tank for the first year and a half. They first spawned in a sparcely stocked 125 after being fed on high protein pellets (mainly for the cichlids in the tank-venustus etc) followed by 2 days of boiled lettuce and 2-4 days of fasting.

They would shimmy and spawn for 3-4 days, giving their tank mates hours of tasty eggs. The silvers were initially dither fish so I never provided then w/ plants or a 6 foot tank of their own.

Currently they are in a 180 gal (which is way over stocked) and I haven't seen spawning behavior since august.
 
Thank you so much for your reply and sharing your experience! It has helped!

From what I am reading online I keep getting conflicting stories. Example: Parents will eat the eggs and/or parents will not eat them.

But one thing I am finding consistant is that they require large aquariums to breed in. I don't have an extra 100+gal lying around so I guess I will experiment a little. (well, I do have many large aquariums but they are all housing fish that for sure would eat the eggs including the one the dollars are in currently)

My plan is to but the whole school in a 40 gal (hey it's only temporary) and see what happens. I plan on removing the SD's after I see the eggs scattered. I have read adding plants to float the top will help and that is where the female will scatter the eggs and then the eggs will fall to the bottom.

I am debating whether to leave the bottom of the tank bare or to add sand, marbles or large gravel....I just don't know yet. I'm leaning towards bare bottom for now with maybe some java moss only or marimo balls or something.

I might just scoop up the pair only in the 40gal and see if they will eat the eggs or not.

Well, time to experiment a little and see where this adventure takes me.

I will update here in case anyone is interested for some reading in the future about this.
 
I have 9 SD's in a 360 gallon, they lay eggs often, I never see the parrents eating the eggs. Maybe just because they don't have time to get to the eggs because the cory cats are stuffing them selves lol. I feed mine frozen brine shrimp and brussles sprouts. I think the large tank and quality food is the key. I guess this is true for every fish lol.........
 
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