How many eggs should you collect

I'm starrting a dual breeding project with corydoras pygmaeus and pseudomugil luminatus in a 15 gal. I have a 5 gallon and a breeder box ready for the fry. The one question I have is, how do you know how many eggs to collect? I'm not breeding for profit but so that the younger generations take the place of the ones before. Do you collect as many as you can but then what do you do with the culls?

 

Personally i would collect as many eggs as possible. Low percentages usually even survive anyway with fish. As far as culls...some put in seoerate tanks, some feed to more carnivorous fish, some just euthanize. Either way, the point with culls is make sure they don't breed in with the main line, mainly for precautions.

 

would red neons eat their own fry because i dont have any really carnivorous fish and euthanizing them would be to painful

 

Yes, luminatus will eat their own fry if they are small enough. IME if the eggs are fertile and do not fungus over they will hatch and the fry do not often die on me. I would expect decent survival rates on the rainbows.

Also, I consider culls to be week or deformed fish. Corries and luminatus are not likely to produce very many culls IMO. I’ve yet to see weird luminatus fry and I have quite a number of them right now.

Also, for both species I feel it would be quite easy to get a local pet store to take them. Both are nano species and as you know, both are adorable and unique. That makes them easy to sell! Chain stores are unlikely to take them unless they are “surrendered”. A local privately owned pet store is your best bet.

 

All fish will eat fry, maybe not their own always, but everyone else's even of the same species. you just have to get to it early enough so they are small enough to get eaten still.
Culling isn't easy looking at it at the beginning before doing it, and I'm not going to sugar coat it, but it gets easier when you know it must be done to get rid of defects and undesirable traits you don't want and reduce overcrowding of fry that are growing, so that the traits you do want aren't crowded and have good conditions. When you know you can't house and feed them all forever. Just my opinion but Do NOT discuss culling with people that aren't fish breeders at all unless you want the side eye and their moral judgement over it.
Most folks just don't get it unless they are breeding fish themselves and see it's a necessary evil, something that needs to be done to protect the species and that individual spawn (runts,and defects take just as much resources as top specimens do, and if you lose top specimens and just left with one eyed fish with half swim bladders the mistake is obvious ....) and well, There's your pocket also, it costs money to feed them all and the food bill gets more expensive by the day.

If you are adverse to culling you can join a fishkeeper club, maybe meet up with someone that would take the live culls for feeders. It makes it better knowing they don't go completely to waste and serve a purpose to feed another fish. The club may also have auctions or swap meets, and you can offload some there once in a while,
Re-home when you have too many if too many happens, keep the best for yourself and worst case surrender the rest to a LFS for them to "rehome" they will absolutely take them if they are free. (I checked, they love free fish they can sell for full price!) You might find a place that will give a little store credit you can use for fish food or something. However, if you do get something good you want to sell, the store you were surrendering fish to won't be the place to go to to do it.

keep in mind to add some new genetics occasionally, also a good reason for a club, maybe find a trading partner to trade some of yours for some of theirs so that you can add new genetics occasionally, I don't recommend inbreeding your fish forever, even if you have to pull males or females once in a while and buy new genetics that way. Genetics is a really long story, one I don't want to get into without sounding like a madman. plenty of information out there on the internet to read if you want to know more or say, breed your own line of cory some day. best of luck to ya!

 

All good info and as said your breeding some wanted fish. But that said first ask your local pet stores if there interested. Growing out fry is fun to do. But if you’ve got no where to get rid of them it does get upsetting. I once had Cory’s breed and had about 50 grow to about 1.5”. Went to unload them and no store by me wanted them. Luckily I gave away most but still have about 15 in my tanks. Next I breed bosemani rainbows accidentally. But one of my local stores does take them for credit . So I have that. But even this store isn’t interested in other fish I have. Not even cherry shrimp. So it’s the odd ones they can’t get readily that they want. Good luck.

 

How do you take fish into the fish store for credit?

 

How do you take fish into the fish store for credit?

first you'd need to establish if the even want the fish, then how much credit they would give you for each and how many they would take at a time.

Then you deliver and you'd get credit towards anything they sell, just not cash in hand, you'd need to buy something from them. it's a win for the store, they get inventory, likely cheaper than their fish distributor, and they stick you to buy something from their inventory with the credit so they make a sale also.

 

I'm starrting a dual breeding project with corydoras pygmaeus and pseudomugil luminatus in a 15 gal. I have a 5 gallon and a breeder box ready for the fry. The one question I have is, how do you know how many eggs to collect? I'm not breeding for profit but so that the younger generations take the place of the ones before. Do you collect as many as you can but then what do you do with the culls?

You can mail out the Luminatus eggs to other bowheads interested in hatching them! The Facebook Rainbowfish live page has a lot of bowheads on it. You can also sell eggs on aquabid, The buy sell RAOK page here on Fishlore, or check out the Rainbowfish channels on the Band app.