Question:
how to breed mountain minnows in a single large tank? Please any info would be great!!!?
catherine
2011-12-13 13:01:28 UTC
Hi
I have a pond and I want to breed mountain minnows for it. But I am going to breed them inside over the winter so there will be a load of them ready for the pond in the summer. I heard that you have to cover the sides of the tank to prevent light harming fry. So would it be ok to breed them in a big plastic box? As the tank I have is very small. I could put a light in it if needed? I have 2 boxes. One is 40 liters and the other is at least 60 liters which one should I use. I have 3 white clouds already. And plan to buy 10 to 15 over the next few days. How should I set up the tank? What temperature should the water be? How should I introduce and speed up breeding? I have a small sponge filter as well if needed! What should I put at the bottom of the tank? Should I make some rock caves for the fry to hide in? How many breeding mops should I have? Should they be floating or at at the bottom of the tank? I have looked on google but im not sure about what setup I should take! And they say that I should separate all the fish for a week! But would that be allot of work to separate up to 18 fish! Would it be worth it? I would like to get the biggest possible yield of fish? (You can answer questions in a list of numbers if you want) Any other info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Three answers:
golden lyretail
2011-12-14 17:10:38 UTC
If you look at your three white clouds from above, is one significantly slimmer than the other two? If so, "slim" is the male and you have a possible breeding trio. He may also be a little more colorful. They would fit well in your 60 Liter (sort of 15 gallon) tank.



A reverse trio is ok too. The males are more interested in breeding that egg eating. A tank full of white clouds is beautiful, but save your money. It is sometimes better to spawn fewer breeders.



You could spawn more adults, but would have so many fry you would lose a lot of them. The fry are like little slivers of glass and have very small mouths. Like many fry, they gravitate towards the surface and especially feed there.



If you are raising live foods such as paramecium, vinegar eels and Moina or have a good supply of one of the powdered "rotifer" sized foods, you could probably raise up white cloud mountain minnows. Unless the fry are in very shallow water, micro worms that sit on the bottom are useless as food. There is an outside chance that you could feed them a tiny bit of powdered egg yolk at a time. Try gently squeezing a ripe sponge filter over the fry too - there is a certain number of microscopic creatures that thrive there.



Acrylic spawning mops are used to spawn fish whose eggs have little filaments that catch on plants or mops. I do think eggs in some cases would adhere to the mops, but mops offer no significant food source. If you were to fill your tank with the fast growing hornwort, broad-leaved water sprite and/or "Anacharis". Java moss on the bottom would be a treasure.



Tiny fry like them will will fine some food on the plants you don't want the hundreds of fry the 18 breeders would produce, there would be less forage to go around.



Light might bother the developing fry. If you have an aquarium light or shop light hung or draped over the tank, turn it off for the 1 1/2-3 days that it takes for the eggs to develop. The newly hatched fry will just hang there on plants or the water's surface. When they are moving around first feed them. (That is why plants are useful too in that early hatchlings can graze the plants.)



I have bred them outside in container gardens (tubs of 15-40 gallons / 80 to 160 L. in the summer. Although white clouds come from a sort of temperate climate, like many North American and UK fishes they seem to spawn as the water gets warmer. Indoors that could be as low as 21 C/70 F. Certainly they were spawning in warmer water outside. Water temperature accounts for the variable lengths of time the eggs take in hatching.



So long as the parents were in the tub, no fry survived. (I now know one should feed the breeders very heavily when in the tubs.) When the parents were pulled, a dozen fry grew up and were brought in when fall rolled around. One wonders what would have grow up if lots of appropriate live and dusty foods were fed.



Perhaps you could condition your male(s?) in the 40 L container. Also run a sponge filter in there. In the 60 L container condition the female(s?) and also run a sponge filter. In addition to the usual foods you feed them include a feeding of some frozen food after you have defrosted a little bit in Luke-warm water and rinsed it through a fine-meshed net or sieve to remove the organic soup in the frozen stuff that we really don't need in the tank.



If you have access to bite sized live foods (small worms, Daphnia, insect larvae) so much the better. Try to give both containers weekly 50 % partial water changes with previously treated water that has sat open a day or more. Place the male in with the female after such a water changes. Feed them live food if it can not hide someplace in the container.



I don't know if fish shops sell small worms where you live. Here it is useful to put a soap-less jar 7-10 cm wide or an inexpensive glass bowl on the tank bottom. Using a pipette or turkey baster (a large kitchen pippete) 5-15 tubifex, white worms, grindle worms or black worms are placed in that container. Many fishes will prefer the worms to any eggs or fry available. And worms (along with Daphnia) are rich in lipids, which are used in forming eggs.



After maybe three days of that remove the adults and begin your wait for the fry.



This time of the year in the US we get storm fronts (rain, snow) which bounce around the barometer. It is truer of Corydoras, cichlids and Bettas, but those storms often stimulate the fish into spawning. Likewise I could depend upon summer "thunder boomers" to provide spawning fish we could show to our children. If a storm or at least significant precipitation is predicted for your area maybe it would be wise to unite the pair the day before the storm.



The more plants, the more space, the more food organisms, the more frequent (modest) feedings you offer, the better the water quality, the more white cloud fry will have grow up.



Good luck & all the best!
2011-12-13 21:40:52 UTC
1. minnows are egg scatterers, so you would use the mops to catch the eggs and move them to a healthy hatching tank.

2. a larger tank would be necessary for breeding, that's a very small box

3. all the tanks would have to be cycled for 6 weeks prior to use, or sponge filters could be "seeded" "cycled" by placing in a healthy tank for a couple weeks before being moved to the breeding, hatching and grow out tanks.

4. the hatching tank would be medicated heavily at first with methylene blue and Fungus Cure. an additional airstone or two would be used to circulate water around the eggs.

5. water changes on the hatching tank would be done every day or two until the fry were moved to a grow out tank

6. live micro foods would have to be grown for the fry. there are no prepared foods suitable for such small fry.



SO in conclusion, buy more minnows, don't breed them.
Douglas
2011-12-21 14:00:58 UTC
Before using this fish in your pond, you want to make sure that it won't become invasive. I thought they were native to China. If you put them in your pond and a heavy rain releases them into the wild, there's a chance it out-compete the local fish popluation for this size fish and cause major harm to the environment. I suggest you find a native fish that will work for your purposes. Your local Mosquito Control should be able to give you some ideas.


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