Onatopa

The Black neon tetra is quite easy to breed indeed. Although, I've read that this is not the case in more than one article. They don't know what they are talking about. So, I thought I would contribute.

Note: Since the original writing of this post and as blogged at my homepage, I now have a new 100L tank and in that tank Lemon Tetras have bred twice in almost as many weeks. The Black Neons have bred once. It's hard to believe this new tank is only about 4 weeks old! ~ Another additional observation is that they enjoy darting in and out of Cabomba during spawning.

The key(s) to success seems to be water conditions especially small and frequent water changes and their feeding. Many Tetras usually breed in the morning and such is the case with my experience as I've just watched a single pair breed around 10:30 this morning. They did so in my fairly new (2 months) 38L nano cube community tank. So caviar was on the on the breakfast menu for most of the other fish... grrrr.

The water conditions at the time were:

Temp: 77F
KH - 4.5°
GH - 7°
pH - 6.8

CO2 - 21ppm
Nitrates: 10ppm
phosphate: 0.1ppm
Potassium: 20ppm
Iron: 0.25ppm
Nitrites: 0


The tank was originally set-up using DIY diffused CO2 and 'Eco-Complete' with a heated substrate and lots of various plants (see My Tank photo album). Blue 'moon lights' are on during all nightime hours.

All my fish were fed Live California Blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) an hour or so before. After a short while, the male in his best breeding colors was "dancing" around the female, trying to entice her. The pair quickly brushed together and the female responded by scattering a few very tiny, clear, semi-adhesive eggs that are instantly fertilized by the male. This process was repeated every few minutes for about an hour as the female release more and more eggs. Each time they were consumed by the other fish only. It seems when they are spawning they will not touch the eggs. The trouble seems to come when they have finished spawning, for they then start to hunt for the eggs and eat them. In this case though, there were very few left.

Finer details: I added a bag of activated carbon the night before to clear up the tannin's (that which makes the water brown) from a bag of 'Fluval' granular peat (which I removed the day before). I used the peat to lower the GH even more as I was aiming for 6 or 7° GH. We have fairly hard water here.
I was only able to use "distilled water" for water changes (10% daily) as my LFS didn't have any RO water at the moment. I've since found that either one works and using Brightwell Aquatics BlackWater adds the same ingredients (many humic compounds and additional substances) without turning the water so dark.

This entire event was rather unexpected but I guess that makes me a new father of sorts now. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Good luck with yours.

~Ona

Steen16

When I first began the fish hobby I had all sorts of tetras Black neons, cardinals, glow lites, around 3 of each.. whenever I cleaned the filter pads I would find eggs all over it! I was so enoyed that after about a month I took the pad out and by then the tetras were full of eggs again and dropped a good 60! altogether but none survived