inari

I'm new to this whole fish keeping thing and i don't have the room for breeding fish really and i'm the curuious type what is the worst fish to breed and what is the best, i'm wondering if what i have been reading are isolated cases or the general point of view about breeding fish

Boxermom

Depends on what you mean by worst and best. Easiest and most difficult?

inari

sure lets go with that boxermom

Boxermom

Dunno about most difficult but easiest by far are pretty much any of the livebearers like guppys and mollies. All it takes is one male and one female and in no time, tons of fry appear. And appear. And appear. Ad nauseum.

Some are more difficult because they tend to become very aggressive towards others, including their mates, once the fry have been born. Cichlids, for example, tend to become very territorial and their aggression increases dramatically once their babies are hatched.

Wanna see something really cool? My LFS recently had two peacock bass that were breeding. http://bestfish.com/cichla/cichlas.html

Marc

Those bass look cool - lucky LFS!!

The hardest.... well, there's so many that have never been bred in captivity that the list would go on and on and on.

Easiest, though, would probably be livebearers like Guppies or Mollies. DEFINITELY extremely easy to breed.

Boxermom

Yeah, I'm lucky to have one of the best LFSes on the planet I think. HUGE selection, mostly very knowedgeable staff, clean, well-cared for livestock, etc. The peacock bass were in a large lunker tank that everyone could see, but once they started breeding, the LFS covered most of the tank from view so people wouldn't gawk and wig the fish out. Man, you should see the ENORMOUS lunker tank they have, too. Can't remember how big it is but it has several full size arowana and other humongous fish in it.

Its not really an LFS, its a NSLFS (almost an hour drive one-way) but I don't mind traveling there every weekend. Definitely worth the trip. I often go even when I'm not buying anything, although if I can come up with an excuse to add to my collection, so much the better.

Butterfly

I think Loaches are the hardest to breed, very few of them have been bred in captivity. the easiest for me was angelfish. All you have to do is keep them wet
Carol

DEADFISH

albino catfish....but that's because they don't really acknowledge other fish

chickadee

I would have to say that the the Betta has to rate up there with the worst. Mainly because they will kill each other if you do not get them seperated right afterward. Then when the fry start to show what sex they are it is important to have a LOT of small little containers to hold the males in seperately and the large tank to hold the little females. These containers and tanks have to be maintained every day to get the fins and fish in general to develop into the beautiful fish you hope them to be. That is a lot of changes and I am only describing a small portion of the work involved so yes, I do believe that they rank up there in the worst.

Rose

Jason

Worst would be cats & loaches, with easiest being livebearers.

Isabella

Though egglayers seem harder than livebearers (not to mention egg scatterers), it's really not so hard to breed them. Though it sure depends on the kind of egglayer you're trying to breed. I raised a batch of angelfish myself and it wasn't so hard - all you really have to do is change a lot of water often, and baby angels should be fine. You have to have a sponge filter and good aeration. You should do at least 50% daily water changes for at least first 2 months to raise angelfish. You should feed them a couple of times a day.