Friday, April 20, 2007

Breeding of coldwater fish II

As mentioned earlier, ponds should be periodically emptied to ensure that overlooked eggs or fry from previous matings have not remained behind to grow and to interbreed with the chosen parents.

If we decides to do the breeding in ponds, we may still be well advised to hatch the eggs in an aquarium and to keep the fry indoors for the first crucial ten weeks. A pond that is more or less bare, except for ideal spawning plants at the shallow edge, practically forces the fish to spawn on these plants which can then easily be removed to an aquarium. Thus, fresh supplies of plants should be available to keep up with the spawning.

It is important that these bunches of plants be frequently rinsed to shake off dead algae or any other such foreign matter that could later prevent the eggs adhering properly.

If the parents are not separated from the eggs, many of these will be eaten. Even more important, once the fry have appeared it is the slower swimming ones that get less of the food and are more subject to being attacked. The slower swimmers are usually those with the longer finnage - the very fish that we would most like to save.

Obviously, spawning starts with good-quality parents that have been separately brought up to the best possible condition. It is a bad mistake to use inferior fish as the resulting fry are just not worth the trouble. Each prospective parent should be known to have come from good stock and even if not perfect in itself, be known to be capable of producing good young.

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