At it again

So its been a month since my last update. I ended up selling 22 cpds and kept 5 for myself bringing the total to 27 fish. I put 36 eggs into the tank so that is a 75 % success rate. My best thus far. I also have 27 sawbwa juveniles. I am selling 10 at the end of the month and keeping the rest as my school is a little small for my liking - about 20 fish currently. I would like to up that to about 50. Additionally I have a whole tankful of month old emerald rasbora fry. I moved 30 fry into that tank and it had some fry in already so I estimate about 40 to 50 fish currently. I only have 4 adult fish so I will probably keep half of those that make adulthood and sell off the other half.

 

That's awesome, well done

Some very good results there

 

To bad you arent in JHB, struggle to find quality CPDs here...

 

Thank you

 

I now have one empty grow tank and 3 empty spawning tanks. I am moving so CPDs tomorrow into the spawning tanks. Hoping to get at least 30 to 50 eggs in the next week or so.

 

I struggle to find in PE as well. Usually when I do find any cpds I spawn them when they are still in quarantine, raise the fry and then mix them with my breeding stock. I try to do this every year or 2 just to introduce new genes to the mix. The adults in quarantine usually dont look good. If they make it to 6 weeks and show no signs of disease and look better I add them to my breeders. Usually they dont last a month.

 

Breeding going well with me - move 30 eggs from a single cpd female last night. I estimate about 50 eggs in total (I was counting but lost count as it takes time to find the eggs and move them). Letting the adults spawn for another week and then moving them back to their species only tank. Hoping to get some new cpds for genetic reasons by the end of the month so I need my tanks as QT tanks.

 

You seem to be doing well with the CPDs.
I did it on a small scale, using only a few tanks.

In my case, I had 2 x 10 litre tanks filled with Java Moss, and a sponge filter bubbling in a corner.
The CPDs were kept in a 45 litre planted tank, where they were fed and readied for breeding.
I would remove a female and 2 males, and transfer them to the small breeding tank, where they were kept for a week, before moving them back to the species tank.
Once the fry in the breeding tanks were about 1cm, they were moved back to the species tank. At that size the CPDs tended to leave them alone.

This worked for the CPDs as well as Emerald Rasbora

 

I'm doing both those species along a similar line. Getting lots of fry - that was never the problem for me. Fry survival rate was a problem. Now I am feeding vinegar eels for the first 3 weeks. Fry survival is much higher. I also have 4 spawning tanks now and 6 grow out tanks so I am able to produce a much larger number of fry than I did previously (only 3 tanks, all used for spawning and grow out).

 

@TheGrissom have you watched some of Rachel O'Learies video's, on youtube, about her summer tubbing breeding?

Basicly start the tub with plants, after a month add the adults, just before autumn comes remove adults and fry.

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I havent watched any youtube videos on fish breeding. I am giving this a go in a 1000 l white flow bin filled with rain water. Just going to wait until November once things have heated up a bit. I am keen to see how successful this will be. Did a bit of research on Myanmar - the weather seems pretty similar to PE with respect to temperatures - now I am wondering weather I can get away with setting my heaters to 16 degrees in winter next year. I will experiment with this a bit first as I dont want to wipe out my entire colony doing something silly.

 

Sounds good with the flow bin. As long as you have green water going with some plants to give some zooplankton it will work 100%.

Mybe try the 16° on a small group and see what happens.

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So been a few months since an update.

The emerald rasbora are doing well - I have sold 15 already and have about 30 left. The are about a third of their adult size and have just started colouring up
The cpds are about half their size. Also looking to sell these fairly soon
I ended up with about 20 sawbwas - sold 15, the remaining ones are all female so I am planning on moving them to my sawbwa tank. They are about a third of their adult size.

Then I managed to get 4 more emerald rasbora adults - these I have bred also. They fry are about 6 weeks old. They will be going into my emerald tank when big enough. There are 7 of them. At the same time I move them I will move 7 fry from my original emerald so I keep a good mix of genes going.

The 1000L water tank is prepped and ready to go. Just waiting for warmer weather now. Looking at probably adding 2 or 3 pairs of cpds in mid December and take them out mid Feb to end of Feb.

And finally I have set up another spawning tank. Once my 6 fry tanks are free from fry I am planning on trying to go big - hoping to do about 200 or so fish in a single go. Will focus on the cpds and the emeralds. The sawbwas I will breed again towards autumn next year as they are more difficult to get a large number of fry per tank from.

 

Lots to update here. Lets start with the bad stuff. During December we had a hectic heat wave that got the tanks up to 28/29 degrees. Unfortunately my sawbwas didnt like that. I lost about a dozen of them over a week period and the survivors have taken a hit as well as they have been dying off over the last 3 months. I think I have about 2 or 3 adults left but they arent looking good. Their colour is very dull. I dont expect to see them for much longer.

Okay now better news - before they all died I found some eggs on a leaf. I moved these and have grow out the fry to a point where they are now breeding. I have 6 fish of about 3 months old. Some are still small but the largest 3 are 2 males and a female. As mentioned they have laid eggs and I have moved these to grow out. That was about a week ago. Havent seen fry yet but expecting this week.

On the cpd side I have about 50 or so 3 or 4 month old fish. All looking good. Then I have another 50 to 75 fry (I estimate - there are a lot. In my world its 1-6, then many) that are 3 weeks old. Growing well. I dont actually know what to do with them all as the lfs didnt offer me anything worthwhile to take them. Guess I will sell privately soon.

With regards to my 1000L water tank I managed to breed cpds in there. Put 2 pairs in in early December, took out 22 fish on 07 March. Wont do this again though as its a lot of work draining and catching them and I can get more numbers by controlled breeding. Sadly 7 died within a few hours of me moving them (either I hurt them while catching or it was stress - leaning towards stress as it was all the smaller ones and they showed no signs of injuries). They have all gotten used to me and come to the glass now when I feed.

Then lastly my Emerald rasbora. I havent had too much focus on these as there isnt that much interest in them it seems. I have a tank with about 30 in it. They are very skittish and actually not worth setting up a species tank for. When I had them with my sawbwas they were much more active and outgoing. I will need to put them with something that will make them less skittish. Perhaps some white clouds as it needs to be a fish that prefers cooler water - havent really thought about it much.I dont really want to mix them with the cpds as it will make catching pairs of cpds out more difficult for me, and I dont want to mix them with the sawbwas as I am afraid they might interfere with the egg laying.

 

I have kept mine with shrimp for years. While I cant say if they are actively going after the shrimp I can say that I still have shrimp in that tank and have seen shrimplets often. I have never seen them go after a shrimp or shrimplet.

They will do well with any fish in my opinion. I am sure endlers and danios would be fine. You will need to have your tank at about 22 degrees. They arent a true tropical fish. They handle up to about 24 degrees and can go higher for short periods. On the other side they can do about 18 degrees easily. I havent tried them at a lower temp than that.

 

Yes. They are endemic to lake Inle in Myanmar. I just have a sponge filter on mine.

 

I sold 32 out of 41 celestial pearl danios over the weekend. Moved the other 9 into my adult setup so I can keep up my stock levels. And now I have had 2 more inquiries wanting some. I really cant keep up with the demand. Currently I have about 50 that are 2 to 3 months old that will be ready by end of June or July, another dozen that are 2 weeks and tonight I moved some adults into spawning setups.

Also breeding my sawbwas again - have about a dozen fry and a dozen adults. Will probably start selling again by the end of the year. While I love them they are a mission to breed and the numbers of fry that I get dont really justify the use of the tank space - I could breed 50 cpds in the tanks that only produce 12 sawbwas. Really just breeding them for myself although there is a lot of interest in them from buyers.

Been neglecting my Emerald rasbora. There isnt really demand for them, my tank space isnt really free to breed them in and I have about 20 adults. Will probably look to breed them again closer to the end of the year, possibly in my outside tank.