Hi guys,
Thanks for the kind words. I will see what I have left for sale after I have spread some around to some keen breeders. I would really like to see a few different spawns from these guys and pick the best ones again from the next generation. As I have lost the parents we only have one go at it unless we do another cross - and i haven't yet encountered another good looking gold cac.. (hehe there seems to be 1 good male in each shipment)
On closer inspection I seem to see more females than males - good when breeding as cacs can be bred harem style even in quite small tanks if you provide enough territories... However it could also be subdominant males who have not coloured up in the presence of a dominant male. I have been removing dominant males to a bigger tank and each time one other fish seems to 'male' up and take its place lol..
Anyway at the request of a member i'll try to post as much detail here on spawning and raising these guys as possible.
Spawning tank: 40*37*20cm high (~30 litres)
Spawning substrate: The same type of ceramic shell as the peppermints spawned in - can you tell I like these things??
Tank contents: a large bunch of java moss
Filtration: air powered dual sponge filter
Water parameters: Did not measure at the time - but probably the same as the peppermint tank - very very soft, pH about neutral, temp ~ 26-27 degrees celcius..
The parents spent a few weeks in this same tank in quarantine, where they were treated for gill flukes and camallanus - this seemed to make them much happier and their respiratory rate seemed to slow down. We also saw a lot more weight gain as a result. Gill flukes seem to be very common in small numbers on many fish so now no fish go into our 4x2x2 without going through the quarantine process.
Then they spent a few weeks in a 4x2x2 planted tank - where they paired up and spawned once. Once this occured we took the parents out and placed them back into the little tank with a cave.
In the spawning tank what we did was have a constant supply of live blackworm available to them. This was their only food for two weeks or so (one standard bag lasts at least that long for a little pair of cacs) and they would not eat anything else as long as the worms were in there! (be careful though to check that the worms can survive in your tank - you need good oxygen levels or they can die off and pollute the water very quickly)
This constant supply of food quickly conditioned the pair and they soon spawned. At this point the female started becoming very aggressive to the much larger male, resulting in him becoming a bit tattered and bashed. He was in the tank with her probably a couple of days after spawning and he wasn't looking good. Actually I didn't notice that they had spawned until i saw the male up in the corner of the tank. He was moved back into the 4x2x2 but died soon after.
In any case the fry were swimming at at around ~5-7 days after spawning. (When the first pic of the female and fry above were taken) These were started initially on microworm and frozen baby brine shrimp.. (too lazy to hatch anything!)
After about a week on this a friend of mine sent me some artemia replacement fry food that was supposed to be excellent in terms of attracting the fry to eat as well as nutritional content. Boy was he right about that! They went for it like crazy and soon it was just about the only stuff they got... They grew fast on this food and soon i began moving the largest individuals - usually male - to the 4x2x2...
These guys started developing colour at around 5-10mm size! I think the high amount of carotenoids and vitamins in the artemia replacement really helped in terms of their growth rate - as well as weekly 50-80% water changes with Prime treated tap water.
Anyway back to the present and 3 months later we have the individuals you see in the photos above. No deformities seen yet and few fatalities - I estimate the brood size to be around 35-50 individuals at the start - with about 30 - 40 grown out. This was from a pretty small female so not a bad result. They have all just started spawning (in the same shells) in the 4x2x2 and as soon as i free up some space I will get workin on F2...
Anyway I think thats it! A step by step on how we spawned our cacs... Happy with that Seb?
Any more questions just ask..
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