Anyone with experience breeding Ember Tetras?

[Mary W.]

Bought some Ember Tetras ~ 6 months ago (originally 8, now 6 but they all look healthy), was hoping they would colony-breed a bit but they haven't.  Tank is heavily-planted 40 breeder with lots of floating plants for cover.  Temp 74F, pH 6.8, GH 6-8, nitrates ~ 20, nitrates and ammonia 0.  Fish get fed twice a day (Xtreme nano pellets which they seem to like, also anything floating off what the Corys get).  Just the Embers, Corys, and snails in the tank.

Any suggestions much appreciated!  

Not looking to breed for profit or anything, just to maintain the colony -

Thanks -

[beastie]

Sadly, my experience was, in a community tank (I had corydoras, hatchetfish and like 30 embers), so many plants and just nothing. Tried moving them to a smaller tank, few of them in an off chance some eggs could fall and not be eaten. Also nothing. For me, community breeding didnt happen. I also hoped they would breed, had them for year and a half now

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I watched the Co Op member video about breeding egg scattering fish. You have to lay down a plastic craft mesh at the bottom of the tank to allow the eggs to fall down through so the tetras do not eat them.  Alternatively you can put a glass dish on the bottom of your tank with large rocks in it.  What gets my tetras doing the mating dance (although I don't/haven't bred them) is feeding them live brine shrimp. I've seen them mate with frozen brine shrimp as well.  I keep my tank at 77 degrees.

@Fish Folk made a rock dish to breed his egg scatterers. Here is the video.

 

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Here is a link to my tetras doing the mating dance.  It's cute. They do this immediately after the brine shrimp.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_uTjqOa7VHpcqpSL7ChH786IcFPIxgn2/view?usp=sharing

It's my understanding that tetra fry cannot eat baby brine shrimp right away; they will need something smaller, like infusoria.  And Ember tetras are an especially small breed.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Cinnebuns]

On 6/13/2023 at 10:01 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Here is a link to my tetras doing the mating dance.  It's cute. They do this immediately after the brine shrimp.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_uTjqOa7VHpcqpSL7ChH786IcFPIxgn2/view?usp=sharing

It's my understanding that tetra fry cannot eat baby brine shrimp right away; they will need something smaller, like infusoria.  And Ember tetras are an especially small breed.

To add to this, my understanding as well is that they require LIVE foods. I did some research on them thinking maybe I would take it on but I never actually tried so I could be wrong. My research showed that ember tetra fry specifically will not swim around but instead wait for food to come to them. This makes live foods better as the live food is more likely to swim their direction rather than hoping the powder reaches them before it falls to the ground. And yes, they are too small for bbs initially. I do remember there was some good videos on YouTube about it.