What's best for breeders and fry?

G'day all.

I have multiple tanks with common/albino BN's in each - females with females and males on their own.

What I would like to do is put a male with a couple of females in one tank (about 150L) with some caves and see what becomes of the situation. I just want to check I have all my bases covered for their comfort first.
I was planning to let them have the tank to themselves as there are guppies/mollies in there at the moment - please let me know what you think about that - pro's/con's.

I currently have 5-7m gravel rock, about 15-20mm deep as the aquarium base but I read from some of you that sand is used. Is there any particular reason?
I do gravel vac every 6-8 days, clean ornaments on a rotating basis each week so there is some algae to chew and clean glass every 14-21days. There are live plants and driftwood in there and it is the bottom tank of 3 so there would be a bit of flake food that washes in each day from the guppies and mollies, then water from this tank goes straight to sump filter and back out to top tank. Water tests weekly - usually no nitrate/nitrites, Ammonia less than .25 and ph about 7.6-7.8 with temp 26.

I appreciate any constructive ideas/criticisms.   Thanks folks.

Most of the things you have listed there are more for your benefit than the BNs. In my breeding tanks I would put a cave, a good bit of driftwood and a smear of sand on the bottom.

I used sand as that is what I had. I used a smear because it had enough bacteria to help out keeping the tanks healthy but was still easy enough to clean. Having Guppies and Mollies in the tanks is fine. Just be aware of feeding them too much as the bristles wont like the protein.

Your water reading are a bit concerning too. You should be getting Nitrate readings, no nitrite or ammonia. a healthy tank is normally about

ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 20ppm

The fact that you have ammonia levels and no nitrate levels means that your tank has not fully cycled yet or it has been shocked

also, if you don't already grab a copy of this

www.keepingandbreedingbrisltenose.com

will give you heaps of info for breeding the little suckers

Doug wrote:

Your water reading are a bit concerning too. You should be getting Nitrate readings, no nitrite or ammonia. a healthy tank is normally about

ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 20ppm

Sorry to take a while to reply Doug, not snobbing your response   - just working on getting things right in the tanks. I have a daughter that works in a pet store so she does a lot of the water testing for me; after checking again with her it seems the nitrate levels were around 40ppm so I have been working on dropping that. It's probably because of the larger amount of other fish so getting rid of some has been a priority. The Ammonia colour chart shows the level's halfway between 0 and 0.25 so I am cleaning gravel every 5 days instead of every 7-8 now to combat that and doing slightly larger water changes at the same times.

I have plants in the tanks but also bought some of the java moss (growing a lot slower than suggested???) to help with levels and hiding places.

I purchased two male marbles approx. 9-10cm long and they are settling in well in separate tanks.


Thankyou again for your help, gonna get busy reading your book and I hope to add photos of the family soon.
 

Hi Julie

1x gravel clean with a 30%water change a week is plenty, the pants will bring the nitrate levels donw by them selves so don't stress too much but to keep an eye on them

Also make sure you feed them a variety of vegies & some wafers daily
1 inch of vegies per adult & 1 wafer per adult

I do vegies in the morning & then a wafer at night.

Thanks Chaase,

I have always given cucumber (sliced in half and about 2 inch long) each day, about every 4th day I give zucchini, carrot or pumpkin instead. Doug recommended this when I bought some more bn's off him about 9 months ago.

I have only given wafers about every 5th day but will increase this too.

I guess all the ferns I have in there weren't quite enough so hopefully the moss grows quickly.

Appreciate the help tho!

the moss is good, try put some in the caves, if the fry wanna hide its good