Neon Tetra breeding log...

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Smertrios

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 18, 2007
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USA
A few weeks ago I was day dreaming about about breeding neon tetras for profit (on a fairly large scale so I could sell to LFS across the country)... Someone who isn't me went to a garden store where the owner sells tropical fish and brought home 6 seller picked neons believing there are 3 male and 3 female.

After checking on them a few times a day for weeks and watching one of the females go from "fat" to "skinny" a couple of times I am not happy about not finding eggs which brings me to this post.

I am preparing a 10 gallon tank. So far I have it filled with about 7 gallons of RO water. Its placed on a shelf right above my computer monitor so that I can see the bottom of the tank and the neons as often as I want. I am going to leave the bottom of the tank bare and place some "rigid" mesh of .1 square size just off the bottom of the tank.

Attachments won't upload. It shows a progress bar but when done it says the upload failed. I put the image on another website it should be fine there for awhile...

NeonSetup.jpg
 
Neons like to lay there eggs in amongst plants if you get a few plants then they will lay eggs there and then when they hatch the babys will swim to the bottom.If you can find a way to keep a gap between the mesh and the base it will be better for them and they are less likly to be eaten by the adults.Hope this helped best of luck.
 
I added a bunch of weighted anacharis and the neons behaviour changed. One of the males became super aggressive towards the other males and would go from female to female checking to see if they are ready to spawn (I think anyway). One of the neons made it under the mesh and while I was getting it I found eggs! Very hard to see from the bottom of the tank.

Now the bad news... most of the eggs (maybe 1-1/2 dozen) are covered in a transparent fuzz and stuck to the bottom of the tank. There was 1 egg that to me looks good and I've moved it to a seperate container. Any chance the other eggs are good if treated for fungus?
 
well... I planned on cleaning up the tank because even after just 4 days its kinda messy with some uneaten food and fungus eggs (plus no filtration). I didn't plan on wigglers so I took everything out. To be certain I took a flashlight and scanned the bottom of the tank and saw one wiggler *then* so did a neon! I think that neon gulped 2 or at least tried twice before I could scare it and the other 5 to another part of the tank. I put the mesh back in so I could net them out without more wiggler losses. Just finished doing that and have now found 4 wigglers remaining plus a bunch of still fuzzy eggs (some appear broken open and/or dis-integrating).

Now I am challenged with feeding! I know infusoria are a good first food and I have plenty of those on hand because of another critter I grow (deroworms & daphnia).
 
I bought the anachris in the evening and put it in the tank. The next day I noticed a female neon had found a favorite spot under one of the anachris stems. She stayed there for a couple days but I couldn't find any eggs so I thought they were eaten or just too small to see.

That said I have another update... I ordered 100 neons on aqua bid they arrived tuesday. Seller said there were 112 shipped but I could only count 102 with 12 being dead =/. I knew they would loose color during shipping but didn't expect so many dead neons (many of the dead were nibbled on with missing bellies) and 10 that didn't show in the pic! =) something happened... I'll show you how I counted them

NeonCount1.JPG


NeonCount2.JPG


I am going to seperate the males and females for conditioning. not sure what I will try next
 
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