New Community Aquarium/Breeding projects

[Nik_n]

I have been planing this project for whole of summer and today I finally finished setting up my new community planted aquarium. The tank has a volume of 60l, slightly smaller than I hoped, but I'm on a budget. It's decorated with spider-wood and rocks I found in the nearby forest. Planted with mostly stems, cripts and epiphytes (pictures will follow soon). 

Tomorrow I'm starting the fish in cycle, I method I used successfully in the past. I have a rough idea of stalking; 

1.  Cory cats(x6) single spices (haven't decided yet)
2. Fork-tailed rainbow fish (4-6)
3. Celestial Peral danios (4-6)

To be clear, I will only be adding one group of these fish at a time, and add the rest over the next few weeks. I have not kept CPDs or rainbows before so I'm excited to try them out. I was considering adding another group of corries, pair/trio of killifish or a school of other nano fish later down the road, would any of that be possible? I would appreciate any stoking ideas I want to keep the tank lightly stoked. 

My plan for this aquarium is to serve as a community tank, with fish that I can breed for profit. My plan was to either use spawning mops in the tanks to collect the eggs from individual species (e.g. every morning for rainbow fish) and take out pair/trio of conditioned breeding pairs. Since the fish stated above are all egg scatterers I plan to construct spawning mops in order to induce spawning. Additionally, I did not include any type of moss or other plant that may seems as a more preferable spawning site, in order to entice the fish to lay their eggs in the mops. I haven't tried this method before and am doing it as sort of an experiment. 

I have been doing research in breeding of all these fish and I will keep updating the thread as I go.     

    

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/24/2022 at 10:13 PM, Nik_n said:

I have been planing this project for whole of summer and today I finally finished setting up my new community planted aquarium. The tank has a volume of 60l, slightly smaller than I hoped, but I'm on a budget. It's decorated with spider-wood and rocks I found in the nearby forest. Planted with mostly stems, cripts and epiphytes (pictures will follow soon). 

Tomorrow I'm starting the fish in cycle, I method I used successfully in the past. I have a rough idea of stalking; 

1.  Cory cats(x6) single spices (haven't decided yet)
2. Fork-tailed rainbow fish (4-6)
3. Celestial Peral danios (4-6)

To be clear, I will only be adding one group of these fish at a time, and add the rest over the next few weeks. I have not kept CPDs or rainbows before so I'm excited to try them out. I was considering adding another group of corries, pair/trio of killifish or a school of other nano fish later down the road, would any of that be possible? I would appreciate any stoking ideas I want to keep the tank lightly stoked. 

My plan for this aquarium is to serve as a community tank, with fish that I can breed for profit. My plan was to either use spawning mops in the tanks to collect the eggs from individual species (e.g. every morning for rainbow fish) and take out pair/trio of conditioned breeding pairs. Since the fish stated above are all egg scatterers I plan to construct spawning mops in order to induce spawning. Additionally, I did not include any type of moss or other plant that may seems as a more preferable spawning site, in order to entice the fish to lay their eggs in the mops. I haven't tried this method before and am doing it as sort of an experiment. 

I have been doing research in breeding of all these fish and I will keep updating the thread as I go.     

    

May I advise palaeatus corys ? They're supposedly very easy to breed. 

Just want to warn you that CPDs have tiny eggs, and love eating them!

Keep us posted!

[Flumpweesel]

You might struggle with the breeding for profit in a communty set up.  When my corys spawn there are queues of fish waiting to eat their eggs, admittedly my stock is different (tetra, barb, rasbora and SAE's), but it is a surprise if any eggs remain in my tank by morning, I get small population increases so this suits me, you might have to collect your mops sooner to get good clutch sizes.

 

[Nik_n]

On 10/25/2022 at 10:29 AM, Flumpweesel said:

You might struggle with the breeding for profit in a communty set up.  When my corys spawn there are queues of fish waiting to eat their eggs, admittedly my stock is different (tetra, barb, rasbora and SAE's), but it is a surprise if any eggs remain in my tank by morning, I get small population increases so this suits me, you might have to collect your mops sooner to get good clutch sizes.

 

I plan on conditioning the parents in the community tank and breeding them in a separate container, to maximise fry yield. I talked to my pet store, and they said they will take in any fry I raise. We haven't talked out the details yet, so I don't know if it's possible receive my payment in cash. 

So yesterday I bough my the first six fish for my aquarium. Its a group of corydoras schwartzi, which seem to be close to 2 year in age based on their size. I will upload some photos later on. 

Today has been a second day of the in fish cycle. I did a 80% water change and tested the water using the tetra test strips, results came back as:

1. NO2- 1 mg/l
2. NO3- 50mg/l
3. pH-6.8

The store did not have any ammonia tests, so unfortunately I won't be able to test for ammonia until Friday(when I'm going to a specialised fish store). On Friday I will buy another group of fish and some more plants to finish the scape and help with nitrate removal. You can expect pictures then.  

I'm still undecided on the type of fish I'm going to get, currently I'm between CPDs and fork tailed rainbowfish. 

Edited October 26, 2022 by Nik_n