Meeting Notes

March, 2011

Speaker: Stephan Tanner (70 people present)
Topic: "Egg Scatterers"

Introduction:

Egg Scatters: egg laying fish that usually do not provide care for their offspring.

Includes:
Most tetras
Most barbs and danios
some catfish
some loaches
some oddballs (glassfish, knifefish, etc.)

A behavior that is not found among cichlids, Not a single cichlid is an egg scatterer.

Material and Methods:

The difference between a hobby breeder vs. commercial breeding

Hobby breeder: you breed what you can

Commercial breeders: Stores need 50,000 Pork Chop Rasboras by May 1! Must do breeding on command and produce fish on command in the numbers required.

Set-Up: The screened tank: 10 gallon tank with 4x4x4 sponge filter, with crossstich mesh (biggest hole size) trimmed it so it fits left to right and pulled so it is bowed down in the tank. Lay a heater on top and it's fine. The plastic mesh is pushed inside so it is bowed tight and the sponge filter lifts it up. This simulates what a lot of egg scatterers do - they breed on the sides of the creek in 10 inches of water depth.

Setups: The "lazy" approach: A wedge-shaped design for continuous breeding. Glue in two pieces of glass that are V-shaped and put an air or pump driven small filter or powerhead for flow to push water across the divider at the gap in the "V." The eggs will get flushed through, or the fry hatch and get pushed through the gap. The strong current pushes them into a very narrow gap. This saves the fry from the parents. Works very well with fish that are hard to get any numbers of fry from. Put food in the small compartment for the fry.

Setups: The "Czech" approach for tetras and barbs: Side view of tank, pair setups only. In Czech pH is 6.0 and very soft, no hardness that you can measure. There are lots of ponds where they used to grow carp and other fish. Those ponds are everywhere in the countryside and are full of living organisms such as daphnia, cyclops, mosquito larvae. The ponds are dense with organisms and they feed their fish with a lot of this live food. The organisms get the breeder fish into breeding shape and help get the fry into saleable condition very quickly.

Square tank with mesh. Tank is 1/4 gallon to 2 gallon with no filter or air. Screen is bowed across front. The simplest method for breeding tetras and barbs!

When Stephan was in Eastern Europe after the wall fell, he found several breeders who were breeding fish without any technology. The ideas and tricks they came up with used a minimum of technology. They came up with ingenious methods of breeding fish. Some of the fish breeders bought their houses with the money they made breeding fish. Ex: Panda Cories - the fish breeders bred tens of thousands of panda cories in Eastern Europe.

Materials needed: double strength glass preferred (3mm German float glass), glass cutters (diamond), waterproof sandpaper and sanding block, or an electric sander with a dust mask(!). With these things you can quickly sand the glass after scoring the glass. Silicone rubber sealant DAP with gun (look for 100% silicone!) (Stephan uses GE Silicone One), plastic mesh which is used for crafting (get the biggest holes possible) with a hole cut for the filter tube in it, paper towels and window cleaner or ethanol, yardstick (metal) (Vacuum afterwards to avoid glass splinters!!!). Use safety glasses!

Danio meghalayensis: Stephans favorite danio from India. Females are fatter than males. Female usually kills the male in a 10 gallon tank. Two inch fish, but they are extremely aggressive towards each other. Bred in the wedge set-up. Not easy to breed according to Stephan. "May be able to breed them in ponds."

Selecting the breeders: Get the best parental fish you can obtain! Purshase a nice group of juveniles (8-12) rather than pairs.

What do you look for?

• A batch of evenly grown tank raised or wild fish
• No abnormal shapes, hunchbacks, missing fins etc. (These problems are not always genetic. They could be from nutritional deficiencies.)
• Good color (may be age dependant)
• Normal swimming behavior (no head up swimming) "If it swims funny, something is wrong."

"Don't buy only pairs. One will jump out, or they kill each other, or you got two males or two females. It's not a good idea. I would always buy a group of fish. You will usually succeed at breeding fish when you put a group together and let them pair off." Look for a bachelor fish that is well-formed.

Age of breeders:

• For tetras younger is better (less than 2 years old)
• For many barbs use young (1 year) females with 2 year males

Separation of the sexes:

Conditioning the breeders: Raise the prospective parents with a variety of good foods. The quality of the eggs and thus the chance of success largely depends on the feeding status of the female. Recommended: frozen feeds and live food such as grindal, black or white worms.

Staple feeds: cyclopeze, BSD kelp and spirulina, pure spirulina, BSD Golden pellets. Invest in the best food you can get.

Trout chow: Used a lot. It can be a good choice for some fish. In trout growing you have to bring your fish to marketable size as quickly as possible with the least amount of waste. In order not to pollute their raceways and pond, the aquaculture industry has worked to create the best food with the best absorption with the least amount of waste. These foods have the least amount of bi-product. There are no binders in this food and it can make the tank water turbid. You have to feed it in limited amounts.

Water quality: Very active fish and a lot of good foods pollute the water. These are high metabolism fish. Rather than "doctor the water," change it!!! The goal is to remove pollutants, i.e. what goes into the tank has to be taken out. "I pay little attention to pH or hardness to raise and condition the parents."

What you really want is to remove the nitrate, which is the outcome from breaking down proteins. You must remove it through water changes. Stephan's pH is 8.5 and he is still breeding lots of fish in that water!

Puntius arulius barb: One of Stephan's favorites. Male are more colorful. 4.5 inches. Extremely aggressive feeder. Don't keep them with anything not able to fend for themselves with food. Feed with modesty as they get fat livers quickly. Dozen in a 120 gallon tank is stunning. Stephan is a big fan of the Indian Barbs. He breeds quite a few of them on and off, but the problem is that they breed over 1000 fry in one batch.

Eggs, now what? Most egg scatterer eggs are rather resilient and can be siphoned with a small hose or collected with a fine net. Or pull the pair of fish out and leave everything else in the tank. Most fry hatch in as little as 1-3 days (very small, attached to the sides of the tank). Do a 50% water change as the male sperm can ferment and ruin the eggs.

The problem of fungus: acriflavine (very toxic, be careful). Do Not Use malachite green. It calcifies the eggs! Be quite careful with these substances! Usually you have more problems than they do you any good. Sweet Almond leaves, alder cones or oak leaves work very well and are natural. Don't store alder cones in plastic bags. Store them in paper bags.

Devario malabaricus: Giant danio. Great favorite in the hobby from Sri Lanka. Pictures don't do them justice. This fish looks best after a water change with cool water. "Males really color up and glow." The wild type giant danio is a fish worth keeping.

Raising the Fry: Most larvae hang around for a day or two and there is no feeding required. The biggest problem: the fry can be tiny, so the first food may need to be smaller than baby brine shrimp. They do not go after powered foods.

Put a light in the corner and darken the tank and the fry will collect in a corner where you can put infusoria (paramecium, green water), vinegar eels, microworms, rotifers, powdered feeds (Golden Pearls, Spirulia Powder). Once they get to the point where they can eat BBS you are out of the woods.

Infusoria culture, put in banana peel and that feeds it. Stephan loves microworms. They are easy to cultivate (oats with dry yeast with hot water to soak it, and add a few microworms and it grows). Stephan feeds microworms, frozen rotifers and powdered feeds all together so the fish can choose what they prefer. With time you can figure out what the fry prefer. Almost all baby fish will eat microworms. Use a paint brush to get the worms off the side of the container. You will get worms of all sizes that the baby fish can eat.

Stephan suggests you use a good yeast and oatmeal for the culture. Add a vitamin supplement if you want.

Stephan's favorite is freeze dried rotifers and copepods from Brine Shrimp Direct. These can be stored in the freezer and mixed with spirulina powder or mixed with flake food that is ground down into powder. (Stephan loves the new Xtreme foods that are new to the market.) He puts a little on the surface of the tank and the little fry seem to find a good variety. He keeps feeding this even along with the baby brine. They love the stuff and it is one of the best additions to the market in the last few years.

Baby Brine Shrimp! The ultimate fry feed! (Store eggs in the freezer) There is almost nothing that feeds better! Highly nutritious! Most common mistake is that people set them up and depending on eggs, temperature and salt concentration - once they hatch, FEED THEM. The problem is that the larvae starts to molt through several stages and they will use the yolk sac which will cause them to loose the nutrient content. If you wait too long the BBS gets hard and the fry won't feed on them. Feed once or twice a day with fresh baby brine shrimp. It pays to get sea salt for the saltwater tanks. Hatch rate is much better with oceanic salt.

Put one litre of water, two tablespoons of salt, and 8 drops of bleach to disinfect the eggshells and soften up the shells. Keeps the germ rate down during the hatch. Better hatch rate with bleach.

Notropis chrosomus: Rainbow Shiners. SE United States, Georgia and so forth. There are awesome shiners out there. "There are a whole bunch of really cool native fish around."

Fine trout chow in 00 grade is good. Silver Cup manufacturers this food. Shelf life of 3-6 months, so vacuum pack it to keep it fresh. Store in freezer. Don't keep it at room temperature.

Stephan keeps all his food in the freezer. "Flakes, everything!"

Frozen Cyclop-eeze. Jehmco has a great line of frozen rotifers and frozen cyclopse - 2.2 pounds of frozen Cyclops. Daphnia and Cyclops are small crustaceans eating algae. These foods mimic what the fish find in nature.

WATER CHANGES, WATER CHANGES, WATER CHANGES! If you want to raise fish, you have to do water changes!

Lemon loaches: 0ne of Stephans favorite loaches. (acanthocobitis zonaltornans) He bred these in a screened tank. The head of the baby loach was smaller than the head of the baby brine and the loach fry could eat the BBS because the BBS was soft.

Stephan's Website: www.swisstropicals.com

Submitted by Sherry Mitchell