Pseudosphromenus dayi - Indian spike tail paradise fish breeding photos

[FinalFins]

I thought I would share some photos of my most recent project - Indian spiketail paradise fish , red spiketails, Dayi, they are called many things. One of my friends actually introduced me to this fish. Ever since I knew about them, I loved them. Alas, I could never find any. Quite a rare fish I think.

Fast forward a year and a bit, I actually got a box of these fish up at my door. I think they are beautiful fish. Not as flashy as some others, but beautiful in their own right. I think they have been in my care for around ~2 months, +/- a week. 

Here is some of mine.

Male on top, 2 females below him. This is about a month after I received them, in their final tank.

I was hoping for at least a male and female when I got the shipment- I had never actually found lots of documentation on breeding this exact species, and only a few entries. I didn't know how to initiate spawning or how hard it would be. Anyways, into the quarantine tank they went, and a bit of complication happened. Essentially I had to find 3 more due to some unexpected troubles. Luckily I sourced more.

I ended up in total with 3m/3f in the end. Only a couple days after [I received them], they bred without me intervening, or doing anything. They didn't require any pre- conditioning, just a diet of flake, which they took quite eagerly for a wild fish. My last group of wild gourami took a while to wean to dry foods. Since it was a quarantine tank, I couldn't really move everyone except the male to another tank. The male actually did fairly well in the presence of conspecifics. He mostly guarded the entrance to his coconut cave. 

Heres a picture of them actually spawning - you can see some eggs in the nest. The embrace happened right as I took the photo. Keep in mind this is all in a small quarantine tank. Not at all meant to be their final setup. 

I let the male guard them for about a week, then I chose to try and remove some of the fry. I ended up removing about 20 fry, in 2 go's 

Here is one in the first fry container.

Absolutely minuscule. Duckweed for scale. 

For the next 2 weeks I grew them out in a pint container. They about doubled in size. I don't think they can actually take anything other than paramecium or rotifers. Didn't have those. They grew up on infusoria on java moss, until I moved them to a 20 gallon with plenty of floating plants and more moss. 

Eventually, I got to the point where they could accept live baby brine shrimp. That really helps. I also found several more 2 wk old fry in the vacant quarantine tank. They were only added a couple days ago to the main grow out tank . The month & 1/2 old fry and young fry seem to coexist well.

I'm now at the point where I am comfortable in their survival rate and growth. The biggest is around a centimeter and little more, and the rest are around the size of a rice grain.

All of them are growing out very well, and these will be some F1 fry which I will probably try to get some F2 out of them. Very slow growers though. Compared to honey gouramis and betta fry I see documented around the web, these are very far behind. 

The fry kind of remind me of parosphromenus. 

These fish are one of my favorite in all of my tanks - mostly because they taught me so much about labyrinth fish and fry growth in general. I did not think these fish would be this ridiculously easy to spawn. They still spawn in their main tank, but I don't collect the fry.

The congener to this fish, P. cupanus, seem to be more shy and difficult to get adjusted to captivity. I've been told they are much more shy and light sensitive than dayi. I think I will have a try at those one day.

[TheSwissAquarist]

Congratulations on breeding them!

[FinalFins]

I actually want to add, I actually found fry living in the main tank these guys are housed in right now. I'm surprised the emerald eye rasboras haven't found them yet.