Breeding the Fathead minnow (rosy red)

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
bass_cats;3457140; said:
Depends if it is an indoor pond or an outdoor pond. If its outdoor, they will only breed once a year, but if its a big enough bog there might be enough room for some fry to survive. If its indoor, you might be able to make them breed multiple times a year. Each spawn produces about 100-200 fry per female. Its pretty easy to keep them breeding though.
Click to expand...

Its an outdoor pond. I'm not looking for a fully self-sufficient breeding population to provide all food for my fish, I just want some fish that reproduce enough so that my pond fish will have some natural live snacks every now and then, since I plan on feeding mostly prepared foods.
 
hybridtheoryd16;3484007; said:
I feed fat heads to

1 large mouth bass
2 scomb payara
1 charax gibbous
1 unknown species ace cuda
3 yellow tail cuda's
3 hujeta characins
1 red tailed payara Tatauaia
and a fahaka puffer on occassion.

sadly they also eat alot of convict feeders as well.

my local bait shop loves me. lol
Click to expand...
--------------
Wow you keep some hearty eating fish and unusual fish like your payaras. I have never seen them for sale nor yellow tail freshwater barracudas .
 
BenSow;3649647; said:
are fatheads the same as rosy reds?
Click to expand...

Yep, thats what the title says.
 
to the op

I must say this is a timely thread for me to find.

I maintain a pred tank for a museum and in my fish room I have a 15g guppy tank, 65g minnow tank and a 65g goldfish tank. I have managed to get the minnows to a nice size colony and have intentions of saving some of them to keep them from meeting the feeders end. I am going to do a 150-250 feeders safe haven tank where I populate it with those fish that are meant to be feeders.

I also had a ? for the op is it normal for rosie reds to have black fins, I found one that has a totally black tail and put him aside in one of my fry grow out tanks.


I will have to totally reread this thread and see what I can come up with for my breeding program, sure beats paying the pet store for them!!!
 
They can have mixed colors, like gray splotches on a red minnow isn't uncommon. I like to save those also, they just look really cool. Rosie reds are cavity breeders, the males will gaurd the eggs until they hatch.
 
The bigger they are the older they are, they max out at around 2.5"-3". They need the same requirements as any other native, they just need cool water with some current. Just give them plenty of plants, thats were mine like to lay their eggs. Its pretty easy to breed them, as long as you decrease their photoperiod in the winter and increase it during the summer.
 
I work in a lab and we keep fatheads for testing. Usually we have 9 to 12 spawns a week out of about 18 tanks that have 12 to 15 minnows per tank (10g). They are on a 16/8 l/d schedule but every year from dec - Mar are spawning rates crash.

I have done nothing differently all year round but we go from the 9-12 spawns to maybe 1 a week during the winter months. I need to find out why they stop spawning and get their spawning rate back up.

The room tempature is 70-72 degrees.
The tanks and filteration is totally cleaned every 6 to 8 weeks with water changes/drains every 2 weeks.
lights are on from 6 am to 10 PM (One thing is the lights are behind the tanks and not over them.)
The are feed flaked earthworm (9 am)in the morning and pond pellets in the evening (5PM).

IN Oct with these parameters we had 115 pulled spawing tiles (split pvc pipe)

THis month we have had 3.

Any ideas?

I have read that mid- 70's is best for spawning.
I have read that there should be larger males in all tanks regardless of the age of the rest of the tanks fish.

I'm at loss on what we need to do to get our spawning rates up during the winter months.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom