Breeding Farlowella Whiptails

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FINN
Posts: 2
Joined: 06 Nov 2019, 03:45
Location 1: Hamilton
Location 2: New Zealand

Breeding Farlowella Whiptails

Post by FINN »

Hi from New Zealand.
I'm just putting up my 10 cents worth of opinions in regarding to breeding of these magnificent fish. ( We all think our fish are magnificent) I have had a pair for over a year now and they spawn willingly if I let them. For the first year I couldn't get the fry to survive more than a fortnight or so and was getting a bit disappointed. I had a theory in that these fish are basically algae eaters so they needed a good reliable food source. Green water didn't appeal, so I thought about what could be suitable. I've come up with using spirulina powder. My first attempts were just putting the powder in water overnight and then putting some of the liquid in the tank. DISASTER. The water just went toxic and was killing the fry within an hour. This was probably due to the algae taking the oxygen out and the fry just suffocated. I persevered with the spirulina and water idea, but now I added an air pump into the 10 litre bucket and had the mixture being aerated 24/7. This then formed a green sludge on the water line and I wiped that off and gave that to my next lot of fry. They readily fed off this food source. This was good news. I then started to put bits of driftwood into the bucket and overnight a fine green growth formed. Upon putting the driftwood into the tank I was pleasantly surprised to see the small fry attach to the driftwood within minutes and vigorously then start to move around feeding off the algae. This gave me hope and excitement that I had cracked the feeding struggle that is well known to be a problem. I have also added Repashy and algae wafers to their diet. It's hard to say whether that helps or not at the early stages, but at 4 months old I'm trying to take the algae covered driftwood out of their diet so as I can then confidently sell them and know they will survive in a typical aquarium. At the moment I have 60 - 70 juveniles that should be available by Christmas.
Another part of my rearing setup are the 5 litre containers. These are plumbed into my fishroom sump scheme. Presently I have 11 tanks running off a 800 litre sump. Total water volume is around 2000 litres altogether. The small rearing containers have water constantly going in and out of them at the rate of 250ml a minute. I thought this was important as it helps take any waste out quickly.
Any thoughts and opinions will always be appreciated. I can be contacted via Facebook as well.

Thanks for reading this, Eric Finlayson.
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stuby
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Re: Breeding Farlowella Whiptails

Post by stuby »

Welcome to planetcatfish Finn,

You can leave the lights on to grow algae or/and put wood and rocks in a glass container with direct sunlight so it grows algae. After the wood or rocks have algae on it put it in with the fry..... having several contains with wood and rock in them to grow algae is needed. This worked for mine at least.

HTH
Chuck
FINN
Posts: 2
Joined: 06 Nov 2019, 03:45
Location 1: Hamilton
Location 2: New Zealand

Re: Breeding Farlowella Whiptails

Post by FINN »

Hi Chuck,
I'm growing the algae every day with my method. Like you I'm using any type of object and putting it into the brew. I'm glad to see other people are using the same type of idea for raising the whiptails. I have a lot of envious fish breeders in NZ as I'm one of a very few that have bred them in reasonable numbers. Looking forward to hearing from you another time perhaps.
aquaholic
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Interests: Catfish, tankbusters and cichlids

Re: Breeding Farlowella Whiptails

Post by aquaholic »

Well done!

For royal whip tails, I used 6 - 8 lengths of 25cm x 2cm x 2 cm hardwood per baby tank with a wire hook at one end. Put these outside in direct sunlight in 14 numbered 2L plastic bottles with a pinch of soluble fertilizer to grow thick algae and rotate out with new food sticks each day, harvesting from oldest container two weeks old and returning eaten sticks to the newest container. After a couple of months the sticks develop a wonderful fur of micro food as well as algae.

Can also try soaking nori seaweed sheets or spiraling flake onto smooth river rocks then bake on the sun but the rotated algae sticks are very easy and effective.

The wire hook at one end is just to hang in the tank so your hands don't get wet.
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