Breeding rainbows

Hi All,

So ive been hijacking @pierreschoonraad rainbow thread and thought maybe its time i start my own and share my story.

As you may already know im a big fan of rainbows, i have a 550L dedicated to them.

I decided to give breeding a try after seeing eggs being dropped and eaten week after week.

First a tried moving a male and female boesmani to a breeding tank, i think the female was not too healthy, i kept them there for over a week, my male ended up facing the corner and female not interested at all. I returned tgem to the big tank and straight away the male got his color back and was going crazy flashing females.

I had to find a way to collect eggs in the big tank before the other fish (mostly RAMs) feasted on them. So i made green mops, and ties a piece of polystirene to them and floated 2 at a time.


Kept each set for 3 days and replaced with new set. The ones i removed were straight away transfered to my shrimp tank. Shrimp make amasing nurses. They kept the eggs parasite and fungus free.

Today is a week later and i woke up to this.

I counted about 10 fry swimming around, i can see more eggs on the verge of popping so im pretty sure more are coming. I dont think there will be a problem with bigger fry eating smaller fry as the time diffwrence will probably be a couple days.

Now the hard work starts. Im feeding powder food and micro worm. Not too sure they are hunting yet. Its difficult to tell if they went foe the micro worm or not.

Sorry for the long post.. too much excitment, so much to share.


Ammar

 

Congrats. Good start. As they are now dont feed them yet. Wait until they are actually swimming around and not just clinging to the glass.

 

Currently they are still busy absorbing their yolk sacs. They are tiny hey.

 

Well done @Ammar. They will defnitly be eating right from the start. Their eggsacks are consumed within 24 hours from hatching. Good thing you were prepared with some live food.

Good luck with the raising. Defnitly following your progress.

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Thanks guys, appreciate all the info and help, they really are tiny yes. The surprise ones i found in my 2 foot were much bigger when i picked them up. Ill keep posting and updating.

 

Well done bud!

 

Awesome Dude!
Just one thing: I throw the brine shrimp in with their salt water...you saw my first carnage.
If you have fresh water shrimp in there rather strain the brine shrimp and don't throw salt water in the tank. Salt water won't hurt the fry, in fact it's good for them in small doses, but it will easily kill fresh water shrimp.

 

Gonna try hatch Bbs, hopefully i get it right. If so ill scoop them out and strain them for sure. Tha ks for that. Didnt think of the shrimp

 

Awesome @Ammar, well done!!!

Yepee.. we certainly doing well here with all you guys and the Rainbows!

Yes... now the hard work starts but.. you will be ok...
Good luck....

 

Thanks @MariaS, it will be interesting to see what comes of this batch. Might also be hybrids which are very much frowned upon by breeders.. not sure why.

 

small update... i counted 20 swimmers this morning, I checked my mops and some still have eggs so I will be keeping them in till the end of the week.
im feeding powder food and microworm, but im not sure they are eating the microworm yet...

they are free swimming, mostly at the surface, some a bit lower.

 

Good to hear. Now is the time to start feeding them. Just dont overdo it. 3 times a day will be fine initially. Once they get to about a month you can cut that to twice a day.

 

@TheGrissom I will be trying boiled egg tonight as advised by @adrian, my tank is open top so there is a fair amount of evaporation daily.. do you think a water topup will be good enough or should i be doing proper water changes?

 

Proper water changes. Evaporation doesnt remove any impurities from the water, in fact it concentrates them slightly. I would advise to a little water each day and drip replace it. I personally do 5L in a 50L tank twice a week with drip replacing overnight but do what works for you. There is no hard and fast set rule. However I would wait until the fry are a little older before doing WC - about 2 to 3 weeks. Again depends on how heavily you are feeding them and what you are feeding them. With egg I would do WC sooner or feed very sparingly.

 

@Ammar what I have noticed with my fry, this time around, is do a 10/15% wc every second day. I basicly only remove the uneaten food at the bottom so this differs depending on the time it takes me to do this. I have so far defnitly seen an increase in fry survival with this method.

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thanks @TheGrissom , @pierreschoonraad .. so excess food in my case is not a big issue because i have about 50 shrimp waiting at the bottom, i haven't removed them from the shrimp tank, i think future batches will go into my tubs, im trying to keep the fry in the same environment they popped in. the shrimp seem to be very good "caretakers", i dont really have any testing kit to see how good/bad the water is. i think a combination of dripping 2L every second day and feeding enough but not too much should work.
Does microworm live underwater? im assuming it doesnt and any excess will be eaten by the shrimp?

 

Not for very long - a few hours. But the shrimp should take care of any excess food.

 

I am trying the spawning mop method with my cpds. Put 4 mops in yesterday. This morning ........ nothing. But will give it a week or two.

 

im not sure how often cpds go at it, but when i took out my mops, i only saw eggs on the one and barely. so you might be missing them?

nice thing about the mops is that you dont have to isolate your breeding pairs into another tank.
the bad thing in my case is you dont know what you gonna end up with.... which to me is not really bad but for someone breeding specific type it could be...

 

I have enough that there should be breeding at some point. Usually I take out a pair into another tank for 5 days. Just thought I would give it a try. If it doesnt work I have lost nothing