Breeding Farlowella Whiptails
Posted: 20 Nov 2019, 21:37
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.
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.