VISITOR'S QUESTIONS
5... Breeding Cherry Barb
The Cherry Barb (Barbus titteya), from quiet shady
streams of Ceylon, is one of the more favoured barbs, the male being
fuller bodied and becoming a bright beautiful red colour during the
spawning season.
During spawning the males can be very aggressive towards
the female, frantically chasing and nudging her, for this reason it
is a good idea to provide adequate cover for her with some dense vegetation
or the like, otherwise she could be killed. Indeed parent fish are so
active during spawning they often jump clear of the water and can easily
jump from the tank, therefore the aquarium should have a good cover
on it.
For breeding attempts it is often good practice to
use two females to one male. Cherry Barb is easy to spawn, however,
the young are hard to raise, most perish in the first week of life due
to insufficient small Infusoria for them to eat.
The Barbs lay adhesive eggs, these eggs attach themselves
to plants by a small thread and are expelled from the female a few each
time until about 300 are laid. To prevent the eggs being eaten by the
fish you could try feeding small live food to them while spawning takes
place then remove them when spawning is completed.
However, if you want to save a large percentage of
the spawning you could use an effective breeding trap. The breeding
trap has a huge benefit for the beginner who is breeding egg layers
because he/she may find it difficult to know when spawning has occurred.
With the breeding trap in place the eggs are easily seen below the trap.
Even though the eggs are adhesive a large amount will still fall through
the mesh of the trap.
The recommended water temperature for your barbs spawning
tank is around 80 degrees F. or 27 degrees C. However, if you aquarium
water is around this temperature anyway you should raise that by about
four degrees, this rise in temperature is sometimes enough to trigger
off the spawning.
Water hardness should be between 5ºdH and 9ºdH with
a slightly acid pH 6.2 - 6.5 The fishes should be introduced into the
spawning tank in the early evening and then left alone to settle in
with the minimum of disturbance. With your fishes in good breeding condition,
and your spawning tank set up correctly they should spawn within the
next thirty-six hours. It may take a little longer, however if there
is no sign of them spawning after seventy-two hours they should be separated
and made ready for another attempt in roughly a weeks time.
If all goes well you should see the fairly large eggs
beneath the trap, not all the eggs will be visible, some will still
be clinging to any spawning material you may have provided. If the parents
look like they have lost interest in one another then it is safe to
assume they have finished spawning and can be removed to their home
tank. However if the male is still chasing the female around and driving
her into the plant cover you have provided you may be lucky enough to
actually witness the spawning.
When the parents have been removed wait a further twenty-four
hours and make sure that all the eggs are free of fungus. You can start
to look for the minute fry now, they will be hanging onto the glass.
As soon as you see that the fry are there you can drop two are three
pieces of crushed old lettuce leaves into the tank, whilst also introducing
some very mild aeration, preferably using a fine diffuser stone, try
to get it so that it provides a slow circulation of water, anything
more will harm the fry.
After about two days the fry will start to leave the
glass where they have been hanging on, they will have used up their
yolk sacks and will begin to swim around looking for minute food. The
lettuce leaves that you dropped into the tank a couple of days ago will
now be producing a fine Infusoria, this will look like a cloud of suspended
material, it is actually composed of minute living organisms, the fry
will live on the Infusoria for about four days, after this they will
be large enough to eat micro-worms and newly hatched brine shrimp.
Infusoria can be cultured at home, this makes sure
that you have enough supply to keep the fry well nourished, instructions
can be found on the
breeding page along with much more information about
breeding.
Approximately two weeks after that they should be able
to take very fine dust size dried foods and finely chopped tubifex.
The breeding trap can now be removed, if you have a large spawning,
and its possible you have a few hundred fry, its time to think about
carefully moving them into larger tanks, this should be done with a
fine mesh net to avoid damaging the delicate fry. To keep losses to
a minimum water temperatures and conditions should be the same in the
new tanks as the one that they are coming from.
Once in their new tanks aeration and filtration can
be stepped up, this will be of great benefit now and will increase the
growth rate. It is also advisable to change one fifth of the aquarium
water every other day thus bringing the water up to the required conditions
for the species. There is more information on breeding in general, including
culturing live foods,
breeding mops and traps,
spawning tanks and much more on my
breeding page.
Return
|
