Getting Started In Tropical Fish Breeding
Once you have established a successful tropical fish aquarium and stocked it with healthy fish, you will want to start thinking about breeding your tropical fish. Tropical fish breeding is a great deal of fun, but it also requires a great deal of thought and preparation before you are ready to begin. Tropical fish breeding is a bit more involved then just putting a male and female fish together in your tank.
Live Breeding
Novice tropical fish breeders do best when they begin with fish that bear their young live. The reason live bearing tropical fish are ideal for the novice breeder is because they are easy to breed and you won't have to worry about watching the eggs. When a live bearing tropical fish gives birth to their young the babies, called fry, are born fully formed.
Getting Started
When you are preparing to start your tropical fish breeding operation you should first choose your favorite type of live bearing tropical fish. Once you have settled on a type of tropical fish, you should make sure that you have more females then males in your tank. You should have at least two females for every male. The fewer males you have the less stressed your females will be and the more likely you are to have a successful tropical fish breeding program.
When you want to set up a tropical fish breeding program you will have to set up a breeding tank. You will have to be extremely vigilant about maintaining an optimal water temperature. You will need to make sure that the breeding tank is stocked with plenty of plants, these plants will not only make the fish comfortable they will also help keep the water clean and oxygenated.
Female tropical fish aren't ready to breed until they are approximately four months old. This is an important fact to keep in mind when you are watching your young fries grow up, you will want to separate the females from their male siblings before they are four months old.
The gestation period of the average live bearing tropical fish is four weeks. This is good because it means that you won't have long to wait to see if your fish were able to mate. One of the odd things about female tropical fish is that they are able to save sperm within their bodies. What this means is that your female fish can have multiple births from a single breeding.
