What reefkeeping skills should I master in preparation of breeding fish?

WhalesLovePineapple · Oct 22, 2018

In the future I want to breed fish. However, in the meantime I'd imagine there's plenty that I can practice and learn up on so I'm ready for when that happens.

What should I learn in preparation for the future? Things like learning how to hatch brine shrimp? Having a breeding tank set up and established already?

Any resource recommendations like videos or books?

GHsaltie · Oct 23, 2018

I don't know anything about breeding, but here's a bump for you.

Gareth elliott · Oct 23, 2018

-Fish behavior recognition. Knowing when they are about to spawn will save a lot of effort.

Also bites to yourself , fish with eggs do not like hands in the water [emoji23]

-Since the fry will need several tanks, controlling the nitrogen cycle across multiple tanks at once.

-culturing live foods for the fry.

Surfzone · Oct 23, 2018

A big plus 1 on the food culturing. You will spend more time on foods than actual larva if you're doing it right. Get some practice in growing phyto, rotifers and copepods. Just remember if you have all this food and no larva to feed it to. Corals love all that stuff or you can try to sell it. Just keep that plankton machine running

WhalesLovePineapple · Oct 23, 2018

Gareth elliott said:
-Fish behavior recognition. Knowing when they are about to spawn will save a lot of effort.

Also bites to yourself , fish with eggs do not like hands in the water [emoji23]

-Since the fry will need several tanks, controlling the nitrogen cycle across multiple tanks at once.

-culturing live foods for the fry.

Is it best to have all fry tanks connected together with the main tank for increased water volume?

Which live foods do you recommend taking a crack at first?

WhalesLovePineapple · Oct 23, 2018

Surfzone said:
A big plus 1 on the food culturing. You will spend more time on foods than actual larva if you're doing it right. Get some practice in growing phyto, rotifers and copepods. Just remember if you have all this food and no larva to feed it to. Corals love all that stuff or you can try to sell it. Just keep that plankton machine running

How about brine shrimp? I'm assuming growing phyto would be the first step to feed the rest of the larvae food?

Gareth elliott · Oct 23, 2018

WhalesLovePineapple said:
Is it best to have all fry tanks connected together with the main tank for increased water volume?

Which live foods do you recommend taking a crack at first?

I would connect them all, theres a video king of dyi on his rack system for discus. All linked equals more water volume; will all the food the fry will need will make keeping the water clean easier.

Types of foods will depend on the species of fish. Some fry are smaller than others. The big ones i would look at would be 2 species of copepods, and rotifers. (I am tired so dont want to butcher the species names but the smallest pod and the largest pod species mass produced). The phyto is the food for the live foods.
Brine shrimp can also be part of this.

You will want at least 2 cultures of the foods chosen. (3 or 4 with brine shrimp) in case a culture crashes you still have foods to feed this way. I Learned this the hard way when i kept fw pipefish.

Surfzone · Oct 24, 2018

You should watch Todd Gardner's talk from MACNA 2017 on YouTube. He has a ton of helpful tidbits

Surfzone · Oct 25, 2018

The real question is what are you planning on breeding? That will determine what live foods to culture. Example being why culture cilliates if you are breeding clownfish or rotifers when you are breeding Bangiis.

WhalesLovePineapple · Oct 25, 2018

Surfzone said:
The real question is what are you planning on breeding? That will determine what live foods to culture. Example being why culture cilliates if you are breeding clownfish or rotifers when you are breeding Bangiis.

At the moment I want to start with clownfish and move into nano gobies

shred5 · Oct 26, 2018

I would get a copy of Clownfishes : A Guide to Their Captive Care, Breeding and Natural History by Joyce Wilkerson. This is the clownfish breeders bible. I would start here before doing anything.

You will need to learn to raise rotifers and then brineshrimp. You do not need to raise phyto there are allot of alternatives like Reeds algae paste. Some have raised on dry food but it is really hard.

Surfzone · Oct 26, 2018

WhalesLovePineapple said:
At the moment I want to start with clownfish and move into nano gobies

I would also suggest getting The Breeders Guide by Matthew Wittenrich. If you don't know. He is the guy that is breeding the Conspicuous Angels. That book has some good info on both Clowns and gobies among other species.

shred5 · Oct 26, 2018

Surfzone said:
I would also suggest getting The Breeders Guide by Matthew Wittenrich. If you don't know. He is the guy that is breeding the Conspicuous Angels. That book has some good info on both Clowns and gobies among other species.

It is a must have for any breeder and really there are not many books for breeders. I was really excited when this book came out especially knowing Matt's knowledge, I have to say I was a little disappointed. It still is a good book.

It is like he touched on allot of stuff but never went in depth on anything. So many fish mentioned in the book but only touched on each species almost like he was afraid to share trade secrets.

I mean for every fish he should have talked about:

Pairing
First foods
Second foods
Time in each stage.
Was a egg tumbler used.
Was a Kreisel used.
Etc.

So many places are not sharing much on breeding and as a matter of fact less info is shared now than was 15 years ago. Sad because it needs to be. Even the breeding forums activity is almost nothing anymore.