Breeding neons

Hi Prof

Wondering if you could shed some light on breeding neons.
i have read up a little about it and seems to be a common perception that they are "hard to breed". Some other articles however say that it can be done fairly easily.
i have some noens which to me seem like they could pair off, and i would like to try it..
Many Thanks in advance

 

Ask your LFS's for anyone who did ,proberbly no one did

 

I thinks there are several people on this forum who have said that they've bred neons, and no-one thus far has said it was hard.

As far as I know, you need to buy a decently sized group to ensure that you get both males and females. Perhaps buy two groups from different shops to prevent inbreeding.

They are egg scatterers, which means you'll want a good medium on which they can scatter their eggs without the parents reaching the eggs afterwards (they sometimes do eat the eggs). Maybe you can use a mos of some kind (Java moss is common), or use glass marbles as a substrate, which is often a method used by other breeders when attempting to breed egg scatterers.

Also, before you even move the parents to a breeding setup, get some brine shrimp hatcheries going so you can feed the young as soon as they have absorbed their egg sacs.

Cheers
Tim

 

The neon breeding recipe:

Keep a group of neons in a tank on their own and condition them carefully, by that I mean NOT OVERFEEDING THEM so that the females do not get overloaded with eggs. Keep at relatively low temps, 22-24C max. The tank should have some fine plants so that the fishes can try to spawn in them. Observe the fishes for about 15 minutes every day, preferably in the morning when they are active, to see which males are actively chasing females.

Breeding tank: Dimensions 30 x 20 x 20 cm or thereabouts. No gravel, no plants. Prepare a good handful of coir fibre (the fibre from coconuts) in advance, this is the stuff that Noah used to packed into his matress (when I was in my youth....), or which you can nowadays buy from the garden shop for hanging baskets etc. Put it into a bucket and let it absorb water over a couple of nights, in between flush with fresh water. Put water into the tank and put in a small sponge filter using an airlift with an air hose and let it stand for a few days. Then use a sponge and clean the tank meticulously and throw out all the water but keep the sponge filter in the tank. Then fill the tank half full with very soft water. If you are Gauteng use RO water entirely, in the WC tap water is OK. Put in the coir fibre and spread it so that it covers the bottom of the tank. Let it stand for 2 to 3 days. If the tank gets some sunlight for a brief period in the morning this would be good.

Then choose a pair and put them into this tank in the late afternoon or evening. Do not feed them anything in the breeding tank, nothing whatsoever. They should spawn on the next morning. After they have spawned for about 2-3 hours, remove them from the tank. Cover the tank with newspaper so that sunlight cannot penetrate into the tank. If you take a torch and shine it onto the coir you should be able to see the eggs as tiny see through blobs. They take 24 h to hatch and you should be able to see that the little blobs now have tails which will move, they will lie on the bottom of the tank. After about 24-36 hours afterwards they become freeswimming. Only after this should they be fed with micro foods, NOT fresh hatched brine shrimps, they are much too large. Micro foods that may be suitable are brineshrimp foods, or infusoria (google for culture conditions). Once they get a little larger you can start feeding freshly hatched bs. If you feed too much food on one single day they all die, feed too little and they also do not survive, you need to develop an eye for this. When you first start you might raise one or two fishes, later you may get to 20 max per spawn.

Breeders in Singapore have hundreds of these tanks and then combine hundreds of fry from different tanks.

This is not for someone who is in a rush, but for someone with patience and care for detail.

Kind regards,

Dirk