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Anyone Ever Tried To Breed Neon Tetras?


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#1 Pattison

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Posted 28 November 2016 - 05:56 PM

Has anyone tried to breed neon tetras ? looking for any tips



#2 Delapool

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Posted 29 November 2016 - 07:10 AM

Not here, have trouble just keeping the existing ones alive :(

#3 Pattison

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Posted 29 November 2016 - 05:08 PM

i bought 25 over the weekend but they all look to be female unsure if they sell males?



#4 Hood

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Posted 29 November 2016 - 06:04 PM

you may find this step by step tutorial on breeding neon tetras informative: http://www.wikihow.c...eed-Neon-Tetras

:)



#5 Fox

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Posted 30 November 2016 - 06:12 AM

Eggs are light sensitive & water conditions are important,  Would be a little tricky but not impossible.



#6 Ageofaquariums

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Posted 30 November 2016 - 06:33 AM

Have succeeded multiple times, certainly easier than cardinals as you get better batches of eggs. As mentioned above, blacking out the tank is key to preserve egg viability. Separating males and females to ensure girls have a decent number of eggs is a good idea. Slowly ramping up tannin levels (I used mullberry leaf tea) then a good sized water change to dilute them using rainwater works for me. The addition of some bentonite clay treatment like easylife or geoliquid will also encourage spawn and minimize damage to eggs if you are planning on moving them.

 

Before you begin, its a good idea to play around with live food for the fry. As with any tetra, this is a great advantage to have.

 

I would also reccomend a practise run with an easier species, like serpae or glass bloodfins.



#7 sydad

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Posted 30 November 2016 - 12:10 PM

My experiences are the opposite of Aoa's. I managed to successfully breed neons on a number of occasions, but found that results were variable. On the other hand, I found that cardinals, once suitable food sources were established, were consistently easier to spawn and raise than neons.

 

I need to point out here that there were two distinct "varieties" of cardinals that used to be available when I kept them (now some years past). One variety had reasonably solid red under the abdomen, and this one was problematic in that the fry were much smaller than the other which had a white (silver) abdomen. These latter had much larger fry which were able to take newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii as a first food, while the solid reds required infusoria that had been thoroughly washed to remove excess bacteria...failure to do this invariably resulted in near total loss of spawns: I found that neither variant would ever take non-living foods.

 

, As for serpae, my experience was that they were more difficult to persuade to spawn than either neons or cardinals, though the fry, once hatched were easy to raise since they accepted liquid fry foods and artificial rotifer preparations.

 

Back to both neons and cardinals: I used de-ionised water acidified with hydrochloric acid (infinitesimal amounts of this as the DI water possesses zero buffering capacity) to obtain a pH of about 5.5, with about one gram of added sodium chloride per litre;  this proved to be essential. Bacterial levels were minimised by the use of constant low-flow, high wattage UV in the spawning tank which was kept in darkness post-spawning until fry were free-swimming, at which time lighting was slowly increased.I used boiled coconut fibre as a spawning substrate.

 

The most critical aspect of success in both species was preparation for spawning by the use of suitable live foods. My best results were obtained by the use of half-grown brine shrimp which were raised on spirulina powder. Sexes were of course kept separated during the "conditioning": process, which usually took 2-3 weeks to effect.

 

By now you will have gathered that the work involved in spawning and raising these fishes was not inconsiderable. I eventually gave up as I needed to sell the bred fish to subsidize my hobby, and there was no way in which I could come even close to recouping the costs involved, particularly with the fishes under discussion, which are either mass produced (neons) in Hong Kong, or wild caught (cardinals) in Brazil, so both are essentially dirt-cheap for retailers to purchase.

 

Syd.



#8 Westie

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Posted 30 November 2016 - 12:40 PM

I remember seeing aquotix were selling locally bred neon tetras at one stage



#9 Ageofaquariums

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Posted 30 November 2016 - 12:42 PM

I found I could get the cardinals to spawn daily, but the tiny batches of eggs made it unrealistic to raise them. Its a tank per batch, plus a struggle to keep adequate levels of correct size food for each batch. Much much easier to do a single batch on same day of hundreds (at least) of eggs.

 

Totally agree on the above, that conditioning with live food is key. Back in the day it was all about mosquito wrigglers, and you couldnt just buy them frozen like you can today!

Finely chopped frozen earthworms were routinely reccomended. These days chopped HUFA soaked freeze dried blackworms takes it to another level.

 

The use of hydrochloric acid (muriatic) was once a lot more widespread in breeder operations too. These days more likely to be sulfuric. On a hobby scale the use of blackwater extracts can easily achieve the same results, albeit at the cost of some water clarity.

 

I'd also agree that serpae are trickier to spawn.....  but for me spawning has always been the easiest part. Raising fish to sale size is the real meat of the challenge!

 

Also.

On an operation like this, step one is to start a journal.

Test, record. Try, record and try again.

When you succeed its important to have the data recorded to repeat the feat!






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