Give me Breeding Beauties!

[Gone Fishing]

I want to go all out and create a separate breeder tank.

Tell me all your success:D and failure:cry: stories in this regard.

I was going to go with about a 2 ft tank, glass bottom, sponge filter, do a 30% water change every 2 days, drop PH to 6 or 5.5(I'm not sure), drop the temp. to 28deg.

How am I doing?

Anyone tell me your total tank setup;

chemistry, lighting, temperature, water change amount and frequency, what food and when you feed them.

My community tank has a JEBO R3100 200ltr trickle style and I; maintain chemistry (PH:6.5)-(KH:15~30ppm)-(Nitrate:<20ppm)

Temp. 29deg

I do a 30% water change every two weeks and feed them frozen bloodworms, spiralina brine shrimp, flake, granules, krill and feed them two to three times a day. They seem to be doing well.

I have three anubias logs, gravel bottom, two clown loaches, two congo tetras, three bristlenose catfish, 1 -6~7cm golden discus (not doing so well, will only eat black worms(bugger him Mad ) 2 -9~10cm discus doing very well. Infact they're a breeding pair for the first time, (F)Blue Diamond and (M)pigeon blood.

How many discus do you think will do ok in my tank ?



Ah yeh...Thanks for responding. I appreciate any and all input.

[ILLUSN]

my setup:
2x1.5x1.5 tank BARE!!!!!
30C
ph 5.5
filtration DIY double sponge white (yellow) sponges, filled with sinterd glass media.

water changes 50-90% daily

breeding cone, clay pot or 40-50mm PVC pipe

feding 4-6x daily as much as they eat in about 45-60 sec (beefheart mix, color bits, breeders blend flake, live brine shrimp, live mozzi wrigglers, baby guppies)

to induce spawn, 50% change with water @28C ph 5.0 as a cold front, storm or southerly change hits.

[Gone Fishing]

Problem. My LFS doesn't carry PH checks that go lower than 6.0.

I understand white instead of black sponge, but what's the go with the sintered glass media? Why have it and how do you get it?

As for the food, where do you get GOOD QUALITY beefheart mix? I heard of breeders blend flake, but don't know where to get it in Sydney.

What about the black coloured rubber on the heater.
Can you get clear rubber. You know so the small fry, if they do decide to hatch, won't get lost and know where to go (towards the darkest thing in the tank-supposively the parents)

I will go with the WHITE pvc pipe and what about the cone or clay pot as a chose. Maybe I'll have both.

What do you reckon?

Thanks for replying
Jason

[ILLUSN]

i make my sponge filters out of 15mm pvc pipe, i fill inside the pipe with sintred glass media, usually JBL micromech, but i'm experimenting with siporax at the moment, jus for more bio filtration, the sponge keep the biomedia supre clean.

good quality beef heart is also DIY, i use merrilyns recipie, + a few extra goodies. all the live food i feed is also raised myself.

the black colored rubber on the heater isn't a problem if you lay the hater on its side. if your supper worried, head off to a lfs and see what clear rubber sucers they have in stock.

again if you leave a desk lamp on 24/7 from day 2 of the eggs being laid the fry wont get lost, dropping the water level down to 1/2-1/3 full also helps.

you can have 2 cones in a tank, i find they eggs are laid closer together on the pipe, but with a good pair it wont make any diffrence to your sucess rate.

[Gone Fishing]

Ok thanks for the reply

I am still a bit bamboosled about your sintered glass media and your and your pvc pipe idea.
I think I'll just stick with the sponge filter you buy from the shop and have it far away from the breeding cones, but I think I'll try your white pvc pipe, but what about gluing it to a piece of glass is there a certain type of glue you can only use?

[Gone Fishing]

Oh yeh!

What are thoughts on UV light?

[ILLUSN]

UV's are GREAT if you can get one in, the internals I've seen are all black, so a no go with my red and pigion pairs, turks might be ok.

the inline externals really need to run off a canister to work at theor best (stops gunk from getting to the sleve), if you had something like a 2213 at 1/2 speed it would proably be ok, I'll be setting up my next breeding tank like that.