Cyprinodont

Pretty sure I said it but I remove the eggs from the methylene blue before they even hatch, let alone letting the fry swim in methylene blue. The methylene is only used for the first 1-2 weeks of incubation of the eggs to prevent fungus while they develop and it is changed out as the containers get 99% water changes every day in absence of circulation. I've considered egge tumblers but I'm not so sure that's a good idea with rice fish for a few reasons, the eggs are hardy sure but still kind of fragile, I've crushed them before with tools while trying to separate them. They're also very sticky so they would probably all just form a giant mass inside the tumbler with circulation being entirely cut off to the ones inside the mass because, you would need a LOT of tumblers to do the amount of speration that I am currently doing where I'm trying to minimize the number of eggs in each hatching container, and with how long they take to hatch I would need like 20 tumblers running, that would be rather pricey compared to my current $0 set up lol. I might experiment with tumbling the eggs but I don't think it will work en masse. I think the best set up is one of these fluval air driven breeder boxes. You would still get the circulation and water volume benefits but with way lower flow and higher volume inside the container to separate the eggs from each other.

So I have confirmation that they are in fact viable! After this post I did some thinking and seperated the eggs into smaller specimen cups that I had with lids and put them on top of the light. They definitely stay warmer this way and I can separate the eggs more because I have seen good research that the more eggs in a small amount of water, the lower the hatch rate is, with the ideal being 2 per container. I have more like 6-10 but more water than was used in those experiments. Since then I have about 2-5 hatching every day. It's the first thing I check when I wake up and move them over to the fluval breeder box on the tank, I think I have over 15 in there now but it's so packed with java moss it's hard to count. They definitely do not all hatch at once like say, tetras, though it does seem like the cups that have hatches tend to have more than 1 at a time hatching, Ive read some things about "hatching enzymes" released by the fry to soften the shell of the egg and allow them out, too much of that on a less developed egg could maybe damage it and soften the shell prematurely allowing fungus? I've only had fungus in one of the cups so far and I still had hatched from that cup, I just separated the fungused egg mass. It's really hard to separate the eggs gingerly since they're so sticky and wrapped in filament but I think I'm going to experiment with using something to separate them into maybe groups of 2 and keep trying with these specimen cups. Picture of the current set up. I check the cups before and after work, or multiple times a day if I'm not at work, and move the fry to the breeder box on the left which has an air lifter providing constant fresh water and movement. I feed sera micron, repashy powder, frozen baby brine shrimp, and there's also lots of java moss and a piece of almond leaf. I clean out the bottom of the container regularly with a pipette. All the fry I've moved seem to be still alive and eating. I just today started with the brine shrimp to see if they can eat it yet, the oldest are about a week old. They're definitely free swimming as soon as they're born, and strong swimmers too, which you would hope with such a long gestation. Within 12 hours max after hatching they can evade my pipette pretty well and they aren't harmed by being sucked up and transfered, they swim right out the end!

They're definitely different than high tech planted tanks but not by much. I really love the variety of invertebrates available which is just a luxury that we don't have in freshwater. But also I can't have nearly as many fish in those tanks. There's only 3 in one and 1 in the other while my 55 gallon planted tank has like, I think maybe 50 individuals. Plus breeding saltwater fish requires way more work and space than I have, the rice fish don't demand a lot and give me a lot of joy in return. But honestly I think everyone should try a saltwater tank at least once if they love aquariums!

Hi! I've been keeping fish (and following aquarium co-op) since 2013. For some reason I never joined the forum! But now I am. About my fish keeping: I started with planted tanks and nano fish, neocaradina shrimps and did that for quite a long time. About 2 years ago I got asked by my LFS if I wanted to work there part time covering one shift a day, and I happily accepted. Since then I work 3 days a week there now. We're a mixed fresh and salt store (I know, I know) but it's definitely gotten me into the marine side of the hobby and I now have 2 reef tanks alongside my 55 gal planted tank/ fish collection and a few 20gal or smaller breeding tanks, currently with some Daisy's rice fish, long-fin calico bristlenose, and rasboras maculatus (absolutely zero luck with breeding these and not much expected but I wanted a challenge) Here's a few highlights of my best set ups through the past few years: Mom's tank 🙂 29gal West-African riparium & pleco breeding tank. Cycling reef tank just beginning. Same reef tank 6 months later. Newest 29gal DIY All-in-one reef tank. Baby African Butterfly Cichlid (Anomolachromis thomasi) that was born in the riparium above. Looking forward to joining the discussion on here, especially as I ramp up some breeding projects again.

Hello there! I've been breeding this group of Daisy's rice fish (Oryzias wowrae) since the beginning of the year. This was my second year breeding rice fish in medium sized outdoor mini-ponds. I was mildly successful with colony breeding them as long as I had green water, which luckily I did almost all summer this year so I was able to more than double my original 9 adults and bring 21 fish in for the winter. Since I brought them in I've been trying different methods of breeding them since there are so many fish now, and the smaller juveniles are particularly ravenous for newborn fry I haven't had any appear in the colony. I HAVE however collected a ton of eggs by just grabbing the females I see with large clutches and stripping them off into specimen cups with methylene blue solution. I've probably collected around 100 eggs just casually every few mornings. So, all of that is to say, my problem isn't "how do I breed medaka" I've got that figured out, I've got tons of eggs. What I don't have is... Fry. I've been collecting eggs for 3 weeks and they're all clearly fertile, developing well, I only had a few that I had to remove from the methylene blue. But even my oldest eggs haven't hatched yet, despite having had visible eyes since week one and clearly seeing them basically fully developed since week 2. The temperature in their hatching containers is the only issue I can think of. It's about 74F which is just room temperature. All the lab reports say they have a 10 day hatch at 77F, but I'm not sure if that's an equation you can use to see what the hatch rate is at lower temps. Even so, they've passed that date as well and still no hatches. The adults are kept at 77-78F. I check so many times per day and I know exactly how many eggs are in each container, so none are hatching without me knowing and somehow dying/ disappearing. They're in small 2oz cups. Here's the best picture of them I can get with my phone: This is the first batch of 10 eggs I pulled on Oct. 19th. I've fully changed them out of the methylene blue at this point because I wasn't sure if that was hurting things despite it being used in almost all the laboratory reports of breeding at scale as well as many hobbyists. Any advice on whether this is a normal variation of hatch rates later in the season, what I could do to speed things up, what kind of incubators people use to hatch rice fish eggs and keep them warm, would all be greatly appreciated!