Breeding the Buenos Aires Tetra

[fishfarmer]

The pics you have are a great start to an article for the Fincinnati and I will help with editing any drafts you would be willing to start. And the prize money is waiting for someone to submit an article.

Steve

[Rob Tetrazona]

The pics you have are a great start to an article for the Fincinnati and I will help with editing any drafts you would be willing to start. And the prize money is waiting for someone to submit an article.

Steve

This batch is a bust. There may be 5 or so fry left at this point. Not sure what the deal is with this species or pair. Oh well, I was hoping putting them on the spot would work out. This really is not typical with tetra breeding in my experience. I'll keep trying.

Thanks for all of the compliments. Since I'm shooting for an award this year, I'd be happy to write a well documented article for the club newsletter. I'm starting to figure out the macro settings on my camera, so pic quality of fry is improving. I'll pick a species that I know will be successful and hopefully will be one that I will BAP. This will easily take 3-4 months if photos are included. Without photos, I could write the article fairly quickly.

While this breeding attempt didn't turn into a BAP'able batch of fry, I have been encouraged to promote the hobby by taking my first stab at a breeding article. I think I'm ready for the challenge!

Thanks to all who think I have some useful content to contribute!

[Rob Tetrazona]

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So here I am regrouping after that disastrous attempt. There's a lot of failure breeding tetras, especially while pursuing a BAP award, so I always have to stay optimistic.

I have never tried to breed the Buenos Aires tetra before this year, so this has been quite an experience. I have attempted to breed them well over a dozen times and have never had survivors much longer than 2 weeks after hatching. My approach has been pretty consistent each time, so I decided it was time to change it up a little bit. I questioned if the heater was too hot for them, so I pulled the plug and the water temp dropped to about 72F. I also questioned if the water was too soft, so I doubled the amount of Kent RO Right I was adding to straight RO water to take the TDS from ~80-100ppm up to ~160-200ppm. I don't recall ever seeing any fry ever eat microworms or BBS, so that didn't help things out either.

I put the same pair in the same tank setup again w/ the changes previously stated on the evening of 6/7. They laid eggs in the AM of 6/8. Since the water temp was down, it took 2 days for the eggs to hatch. Similar batch size as last time, maybe a little bit smaller. This time I decided to divide the fry out into 3 containers rather than leaving them in the same tank in order to think that I'm increasing my chances of getting some survivors by testing out different rearing conditions rather than the same condition for all.

The breeding tank was in the basement. I put about 1/4 of the fry in a 1 gallon betta container with live plant trimmings and this stayed in the basement. I put 1/4 of the fry in a 6 quart container with barely any plant pieces and this stayed in the basement next to the other container. The other 1/2 of the fry I put into a 1 gallon (handled) container with plant trimmings and this one went upstairs into the kitchen pantry for a couple of days of darkness. The room temp upstairs ranges anywhere from 70-78F. At about 1 week old, they went from the pantry to the kitchen table and I started feeding them microworms. Aren't tetras a household item in eveybody's kitchen?

So far, there have been many deaths. For instance, the 6qt container may have a couple still surviving. These guys never really seemed to eat. The 1 gallon betta container seems to have about a dozen or so still alive. The container upstairs might have 2 dozen or more survivors. Today is day 12 since the eggs were laid. I still haven't witnessed the fry eating, but I have seen some healthy, smart looking ones seeming to be very interested in the live food rather than the ones that look like they have scoliosis and are oblivious to the live food. They also seem to be growing well and look much healthier than the previous batch so I suspect they are eating. They are being fed BBS at this point.

Having BAP'ed 6 species of tetras so far this year, I feel pretty good about this batch by looking at them just now. Most of the survivors have that "I want to live" kind of look to them. They seem active as opposed to lethargic. I've been testing this concept of taking a small sample of fry and putting them off to the side in a small container at room temp and not water change them much just to see what happens and I'm having pretty good success doing this with 3 other species tetras. During my BAP journey this year, I feel that I am debunking a lot of tetra related internetlore that lurks out there to mislead me. That might be a fun little article or posting in and of itself!

I give another update in about a week.

[Jerry R]

Nice effort. Good luck, Rob.

[Rob Tetrazona]

Thanks, Jerry!

This weekend, I actually saw some fry eating BBS, so my optimism is increasing! I'm pretty sure this is the longest I've kept this number of fry alive for this species. Now the hard part is over. It will be interesting to see fast these fry grow, because this is by far the largest species of tetra that I own.

[Rob Tetrazona]

It's been about 1 month since my last post, so it's time for an update. A couple of weeks ago, I consolidated the remaining fry from the 3 containers into a 5.5G tank. There are about 2 dozen survivors at this point. Some have grown so fast to 1/2" that I could probably BAP them this month, but I'll wait 1 more month. They are eating well and active.

Since this species is needed for a BAP award, I did a backup batch the same way as before just to be safe. 500+ hatched and have been healthy looking and very receptive to microworms and BBS.

Not the best quality video, but you should get the point. 1st tank is the 1st batch. 2nd tank is the latest batch born on 7/10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC-C79GmL-g&feature=plcp

[Rob Tetrazona]

The 1st successful batch is still doing will. There are still about 2 dozen survivors and they all look healthy. Last night they were acclimated to local tap water and graduated to a 10 gallon tank.

The 2nd successful batch that was born on 7/10 is doing really well. They must have been getting fed perfectly, because there have been minimal die offs. The fry are already about 3mm! During the journey for my BAP award, I really haven't had a successful batch with a high hatch rate and a high survival rate, so this is a perfect opportunity to make my move before the 5.5G tank gets overcrowded or over polluted. I just had a 20L tank open up, so I drained it, refilled it with the same make of RO water as they were born in, and dumped the fry into it for growout.

Here's a close up of the fry in a cup:



I had about 5 containers like this to dump into the 20L:



Here's the video version:

http://youtu.be/pLfmm7_b_3o

Here's the 20L:

http://youtu.be/AiMyT3oQNw0

[Qaddiction]

Incredible Rob. Great work.

[Glenn P]

Rob, You have more energy than I in the breeding fish department. I applaud your efforts!

[Jerry R]

Very nice. Good job.