At what age is it possible???

Query,

What is the earliest age that BN's usually start breeding. The reason I ask is that I recently removed a breeding pair of longfin ABN from this tank and relocated them to a larger tank as they were breeding at a exponencial rate and needed more room for their activities. In their tank I left some of their more exceptional fry to grow out as possible breeding stock and also added some longfin BN fry to growout as well. Well the other morning I was doing their usual WC and feeding routine and noticed fry in the tank much smaller that the others. The fry left to grow out could only be 6 - 8 month of age and max 2 to 2 1/2" in length. Could they possibly have bred? IS IT POSSILBE AT THIS AGE??? Or is their something I am missing in this senario?

Cheers

Maybe when you moved the breeding pair you lefty some eggs behind and they hatched out on their own

I have purchased several young BN at about 1 1/2 inch total length and had them spawn 4 months from purchase! They were perhaps slightly more than 2 inches at that time.

parkadge wrote:

Maybe when you moved the breeding pair you lefty some eggs behind and they hatched out on their own

At first that is what I thought but there are a mix of fry, both longfin ABN and BN so as the breeding pair I took out were only ABN I don't think so. The real problem is that if they can breed at this age I will have to start to separate males from females (which at this size is quite difficult to tell) to grow them out but I don't have enough tanks and I don't like the idea of siblings breeding. Especially the ABN's as they have been inbreed to get this trait already.

Cheers

Sadly I don't think there are no hard or rules as to when BN's will start breeding, but any BN around the 2inch(5cms) size is potentially capable of breeding.

My breeding male had his first batch at 2inches, yet I have a couple of males from that first batch that are now 3inches and still showing no signs of wanting to breed.

Thanks All,

Looks like I am going to have to get another tank and try and determine which are female and male and separate them.

Cheers and hope you all had a great Christmas.