Plant tanks heavily to encourage livebearer breeding

A heavily planted tank will help livebearers breed, but fishkeepers should steer clear of using a breeding trap.

Enthusiasts who want to keep livebearing fish may find they have to make some adjustments to their aquarium in order for this type of fish to breed successfully.

Swordtails, guppies and platies are just some of the species that give birth to live young rather than laying eggs and in total around 15 of the 480 fish families are livebearing in some form.

Swell UK's Matt Clarke explained in an article for Practical Fishkeeping that a heavily planted tank featuring bushy plants can be a good environment for fry to be raised, providing the tank does not contain any fish large enough to eat the fry.

Breeding traps are generally not recommended as they can cause stress to pregnant females and he advised against keeping livebearing fish in pairs, suggesting to instead stick to a ratio of at least 2:1 in favour of the females, to prevent them from becoming stressed by the constant attention of the males.

Mixing the sexes should be avoided if breeding is not an aim but even then, it is still possible for fry to be produced if there are no males in the tank.

Females can retain packets of sperm known as spermatozeugmata for up to a year after impregnation, meaning it is possible female livebearers will have been impregnated before being introduced to the aquarium. The only way to avoid fry in the tank is to only keep male livebearing fish.

Newborn fry will generally eat powdered or liquid food designed specifically for livebearers or live or frozen brine shrimp. The Aqua Medic Aquabreed 1000 might be ideal for fishkeepers wanting to feed their fry brine shrimp, as it can be fitted inside or outside the aquarium and will house as many as two million artemia cysts per hatching cycle.

Posted by Laura Hendley
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Wednesday, 1 Feb 2012, 5:13pm