What to do if your biorb goldfish start breeding
If you've been diligent in controlling your water quality, and lucky enough to have a male/female pair in your biorb it's inevitable that they will start feeling randy and breed.
All the more so if you situate your biorb so that it gets some morning sun - mine is about 20 feet away from the window so it's very filtered sunlight - not enough to heat up the water or affect water temperature in any way.
Goldfishes tend to breed sometime in spring, though mine got confused once when I turned on the heating late in winter. The temperature in the house must have got quite low in autumn then when the heating went on they thought it was spring and started breeding in the middle of winter :S Even worse they kept on laying eggs throughout most of that winter - every few weeks, and I had no way of stopping them short of getting another tank and separating them. Since the whole point of keeping them in the biorb in the first place was that I had no space, that was not really an option.
There is no way you can keep fry in your biorb, for one thing too many of them will pollute the water. The other thing is that you will need to separate them from the adult fishes who love cannibalising their own eggs and fry. If you are not interested in rearing the fry then the best thing is to leave the eggs in your biorb and the adult fishes will eat them up for you. Make sure to perform a partial water change as soon as the breeding is over otherwise the poor fish will have to swim in milt (fish sperm) contaminated water.
If you do want to try your hand at rearing your fry then you will need to take out some eggs - not an easy manouver. Luckily if you have some Elodea (or other plants) plants in the biorb all you have to do is take those plants out. The eggs will be attached to the plants. Then put them in a 2 foot tank - oh dear - yes you will now have to buy a tank. With lights and a sponge filter.
Keep the fry tank lights on 24 hours. About 3-5 days after being laid the eggs will hatch and you will see some fry attaching themselves to the sides of the tank and the plants. There's no need to feed them at this stage since they are still living off their egg sacs.
48 hours after hatching, they fry will start swimming around and then you will need to feed them. Interpet do a good Liquifry and you can feed them with that 4-5 times a day. You can also make your own fry food - infusoria in particular grow when you put some banana in warm water and leave for some days in the sun. Alternatively just hatched brine shrimp are also good. You then use a pipette to give a few drops of that mixture to your fry. I make do with Liquifry being lazy.
After about 3 weeks, you can graduate on to the powder foods, Interpet also have powdered foods for fry. All the while you must do weekly partial water changes, and clean your sponge filter in non-chlorinated water. Keep a close eye on water quality - fry are very sensitive. A good way of changing water with fry is to:
(1) use a glass, dip it into your tank take it out then check if there's fry in there before discarding the water
(2) use some airline tubing to siphon the water off slowly
I prefer (2).
Make sure you cull your fry as you go along - remove those with kinks, are not swimming properly or just don't look like the ones you want to keep. With a 2 foot tank, you should be left with about 20 fry at the end of 8 weeks. Keep on culling as they grow - you could also sell those you don't want to keep or give them to your friends. Otherwise without culling you will lose all the fry due to poor water quality.
After that if you're keeping any of the fry it's time to put aside your biorb and maintain a bigger tank. If you're selling or giving away your new little goldfishes then you may be able to keep your original goldfish in your biorb for just a bit longer.
Keeping them in a 2-foot tank is the best chance you have of rearing fry. Since I have no space I use a goldfish bowl and do rather more drastic culling, and more frequent water changes. Usually end up with about 4-5 little fishes (from a batch of most likely 200 saved eggs!) which I then give away.
All the more so if you situate your biorb so that it gets some morning sun - mine is about 20 feet away from the window so it's very filtered sunlight - not enough to heat up the water or affect water temperature in any way.
Goldfishes tend to breed sometime in spring, though mine got confused once when I turned on the heating late in winter. The temperature in the house must have got quite low in autumn then when the heating went on they thought it was spring and started breeding in the middle of winter :S Even worse they kept on laying eggs throughout most of that winter - every few weeks, and I had no way of stopping them short of getting another tank and separating them. Since the whole point of keeping them in the biorb in the first place was that I had no space, that was not really an option.
There is no way you can keep fry in your biorb, for one thing too many of them will pollute the water. The other thing is that you will need to separate them from the adult fishes who love cannibalising their own eggs and fry. If you are not interested in rearing the fry then the best thing is to leave the eggs in your biorb and the adult fishes will eat them up for you. Make sure to perform a partial water change as soon as the breeding is over otherwise the poor fish will have to swim in milt (fish sperm) contaminated water.
If you do want to try your hand at rearing your fry then you will need to take out some eggs - not an easy manouver. Luckily if you have some Elodea (or other plants) plants in the biorb all you have to do is take those plants out. The eggs will be attached to the plants. Then put them in a 2 foot tank - oh dear - yes you will now have to buy a tank. With lights and a sponge filter.
Keep the fry tank lights on 24 hours. About 3-5 days after being laid the eggs will hatch and you will see some fry attaching themselves to the sides of the tank and the plants. There's no need to feed them at this stage since they are still living off their egg sacs.
48 hours after hatching, they fry will start swimming around and then you will need to feed them. Interpet do a good Liquifry and you can feed them with that 4-5 times a day. You can also make your own fry food - infusoria in particular grow when you put some banana in warm water and leave for some days in the sun. Alternatively just hatched brine shrimp are also good. You then use a pipette to give a few drops of that mixture to your fry. I make do with Liquifry being lazy.
After about 3 weeks, you can graduate on to the powder foods, Interpet also have powdered foods for fry. All the while you must do weekly partial water changes, and clean your sponge filter in non-chlorinated water. Keep a close eye on water quality - fry are very sensitive. A good way of changing water with fry is to:
(1) use a glass, dip it into your tank take it out then check if there's fry in there before discarding the water
(2) use some airline tubing to siphon the water off slowly
I prefer (2).
Make sure you cull your fry as you go along - remove those with kinks, are not swimming properly or just don't look like the ones you want to keep. With a 2 foot tank, you should be left with about 20 fry at the end of 8 weeks. Keep on culling as they grow - you could also sell those you don't want to keep or give them to your friends. Otherwise without culling you will lose all the fry due to poor water quality.
After that if you're keeping any of the fry it's time to put aside your biorb and maintain a bigger tank. If you're selling or giving away your new little goldfishes then you may be able to keep your original goldfish in your biorb for just a bit longer.
Keeping them in a 2-foot tank is the best chance you have of rearing fry. Since I have no space I use a goldfish bowl and do rather more drastic culling, and more frequent water changes. Usually end up with about 4-5 little fishes (from a batch of most likely 200 saved eggs!) which I then give away.
posted by cylche at 5:08 pm
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