Pimpictus Breeding?
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wesharrison
- Posts: 1
- Joined: 03 May 2006, 18:16
- Location 1: BRISTOL, ENGLAND
Pimpictus Breeding?
hi there i have recentley brought 2 pimpictus cat fish from a garden center and they were unable to tell me the sex of the fish or how long the fish hold there eggs for? if any one knows of any differnces between male and female cat fish like fins etc i would love to hear, at what age/size can pim npictus cat fish start to breed at?
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MatsP
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I think this should be moved to South American Catfish - Others, but I'm not a moderator, so I can't.
There are no official reports for breeding this fish, and as far as I know the only way to see the difference between male and female is to cut them open and see if they carry eggs - and this is of course a "post mortem" type differentiation - not possible for fish you want to breed...
If these fish live in groups that are 50/50 male/female, you could use the statistical method of buying many - here's the chance of getting at least one of either male/female when buying more than one:
2: 50%
3: 75%
4: 87.5%
5: 93.75%
6: 96.9%
10: 99.8%
Note that even if you buy 10000, you still have a slim chance that you have got 100% of one sex - it's just that you have a better chance winning the top prize in the national lottery than getting all fish as one sex...
Of course, it's not always that fish are caught in equal proportions male and females - but I suspect that are one of the ones that are at least close to 50/50.
The next problem is of course to get them to breed - some fish take a special trigger to get them into a breeding mood. This varies from species to species, it can be a temperature change in the water, pH or conductivity change, or a combination of these things - or time that there is light in the water, or how bright the light is. Or a particular food appears in the water, perhaps?
Feeding them properly is also important to get them into breeding condition and mood - this shouldn't be difficult, as they are generally not fussy eaters, as long as the food is on the meaty side. That's my experience at least.
Third, you have to figure out how big a group and what conditions they breed in - some fish breed in groups, others in pairs. Some fish migrate (swim up into small river sections for example) to spawn - this can be hard to simulate in a tank.
Fourth, I would be very surprised if these fish don't actually eat their own eggs during spawning - it's fairly common amongs many fish. If so, they may well spawn in captivity every now and again, but we don't see any result from the spawn, as the eggs are all eaten.
Caveat emptor: I wrote some time ago that "these fish hasn't been spawned in captivity" only to get a reply saying "My friends have theirs spawn all the time" - but I still haven't seen any "recipe" (spawning report) for how to make them spawn - and I'm not sure if anyone actually has recorded a spawn in captivity.
Some of what I've written above is based on my experience with these fish, as well as what I've gathered from reading other peoples experience. However, most of it is pure speculation based on "How fish in general behave".
One thing is quite clear - these fish are prolific in nature - there's plenty of them to go around, but they are not easily spawned in captivity - or we would get captive bred ones from Southeast asia instead of the ones that are wild-caught. We did have a discussion some time back where someone stated that they thought they were captive bred - but the conclusion was that they are almost certainly all wild-caught.
This page says that there's little known about Pimelodus spawning habits, and that captive breeding (for food use) is done by hormone treatment - but also indicates that the close relative to P. pictus the species probably spawns in December after producing eggs from around October. This can then be matched with the seasonal changes at this period of year in that natural habitat - I think it's end of rainy season, but I'm not sure.
I just noticed another page saying that some Pimelodidae species spawn during electrical storms - that's not an easy one to reproduce at home! Here.
You can probably find more information by googling on something like "Pimelodus spawning" or "Pimelodus breeding", etc.
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Mats
There are no official reports for breeding this fish, and as far as I know the only way to see the difference between male and female is to cut them open and see if they carry eggs - and this is of course a "post mortem" type differentiation - not possible for fish you want to breed...
If these fish live in groups that are 50/50 male/female, you could use the statistical method of buying many - here's the chance of getting at least one of either male/female when buying more than one:
2: 50%
3: 75%
4: 87.5%
5: 93.75%
6: 96.9%
10: 99.8%
Note that even if you buy 10000, you still have a slim chance that you have got 100% of one sex - it's just that you have a better chance winning the top prize in the national lottery than getting all fish as one sex...
Of course, it's not always that fish are caught in equal proportions male and females - but I suspect that are one of the ones that are at least close to 50/50.
The next problem is of course to get them to breed - some fish take a special trigger to get them into a breeding mood. This varies from species to species, it can be a temperature change in the water, pH or conductivity change, or a combination of these things - or time that there is light in the water, or how bright the light is. Or a particular food appears in the water, perhaps?
Feeding them properly is also important to get them into breeding condition and mood - this shouldn't be difficult, as they are generally not fussy eaters, as long as the food is on the meaty side. That's my experience at least.
Third, you have to figure out how big a group and what conditions they breed in - some fish breed in groups, others in pairs. Some fish migrate (swim up into small river sections for example) to spawn - this can be hard to simulate in a tank.
Fourth, I would be very surprised if these fish don't actually eat their own eggs during spawning - it's fairly common amongs many fish. If so, they may well spawn in captivity every now and again, but we don't see any result from the spawn, as the eggs are all eaten.
Caveat emptor: I wrote some time ago that "these fish hasn't been spawned in captivity" only to get a reply saying "My friends have theirs spawn all the time" - but I still haven't seen any "recipe" (spawning report) for how to make them spawn - and I'm not sure if anyone actually has recorded a spawn in captivity.
Some of what I've written above is based on my experience with these fish, as well as what I've gathered from reading other peoples experience. However, most of it is pure speculation based on "How fish in general behave".
One thing is quite clear - these fish are prolific in nature - there's plenty of them to go around, but they are not easily spawned in captivity - or we would get captive bred ones from Southeast asia instead of the ones that are wild-caught. We did have a discussion some time back where someone stated that they thought they were captive bred - but the conclusion was that they are almost certainly all wild-caught.
This page says that there's little known about Pimelodus spawning habits, and that captive breeding (for food use) is done by hormone treatment - but also indicates that the close relative to P. pictus the species probably spawns in December after producing eggs from around October. This can then be matched with the seasonal changes at this period of year in that natural habitat - I think it's end of rainy season, but I'm not sure.
I just noticed another page saying that some Pimelodidae species spawn during electrical storms - that's not an easy one to reproduce at home! Here.
You can probably find more information by googling on something like "Pimelodus spawning" or "Pimelodus breeding", etc.
--
Mats