How to Start Breeding

[BennySings]

Breeding Video

http://www.youtube.com/v/k33oqR2k0pg&rel=1
© Sara W. M. Al-Mudhaf
 

© Goldfish Varieties & Genetics by Joseph Smartt

Encouraging Spawning

Goldfish will spawn on their own, but you can help it along by keeping the water temperature around 70 degrees F and making many small WC's (15% two to three times a week).  This has several benefits, including keeping the water healthy due to increased feeding schedules in breeding pairs.  Sometimes spawning can be seen a few days after a thunderstorm and rainfall.  Well fed females will spawn every seven to fourteen days.

Spawning happens early in the morning, right around sunrise.  You may see anywhere from a few to thousands of eggs, depending on when the female has started.  The male should be kept with the female, which encourages the female to spawn, and the male to produce milt.  The milt is a white liquid that looks like milk, and it will cloud the water once the male fertilizes the eggs.

Eggs on bottom of tank:



Hand Spawning

Hand spawning is best left to experienced fishkeepers, but it does have its place.  The benefits include knowing exactly who the parents of the fry are, helping males who do not chase well, and/or demonstrated a low fertility in previous spawning attempts, and avoiding an occurence in a show tank not set up for fry.  Details for hand spawning can be found here.


Hatching/Incubating The Eggs

Most professional Goldfish breeders place floating "spawning mops" in the ponds with their breeder gold fish. These spawning mops are usually made by cutting off 18" lengths of nylon rope. One set of ends is tied together tightly, and the other ends are untwisted to make a big fluffy mop.  You can either purchase a commercial product, or instructions for making your own, can be found here

Eggs in a spawning mop:


© Bristol-aquarists.org.uk

Close Up:


© Brannenworks.com

Goldfish lay adhesive eggs that stick to the spawning mops. Since Goldfish love to eat their eggs and baby goldfish, the mops must be removed promptly and put in another pond or large aquarium, where the eggs hatch into tiny Goldfish fry.

Leave the parents alone for 5-10 minutes to recover, then transfer them back to their tank.  Rinse the eggs with fresh tank water several times to remove excess milt.  Place the spawning mops into a breeding shoebox (300-500 per box), and then place the breeding box into a large tank of at least 30 gallons.  The tank should be set up with sponge filters and an air stone to provide circulation.

Breeding Box:



The water should be kept at a constant 70 degrees F for best development.  Bad eggs or unfertilized eggs will become opague in approx. 8 hours and develop fungus.  The fungus can be a problem if a UV sterilizer in the first 48 hours isn't used.  A circulation rate of 200 gph for a 30 gallon tank with an 8 watt lamp is sufficient. 

If more than 300 eggs hatch, the egg contents released will make the water cloudy and smelly.  This necessitates two 50% WC's on the same day with a syphon made safe with a sponge over the intake tube.  Leave the fry alone for two days until they are free swimming and ready to eat.

1 day old fry:





Raising Goldfish Fry

The fry should be swimming horizontally within a few days after hatching.  They start grazing on microorganisms as soon as their mouths have developed.  By about day 2 after hatching, the fry will be ready to eat.  Freshly hatched brine shrimp nauplii are the best food for young fish fry, as they grow faster and develop more massive bodies on this diet.  You can raise your own brine shrimp to keep costs down.

Since brine shrimp can last for several hours in fresh water, a large amount can be fed at once.  Using live food is also cleaner, as it leaves less residue behind.  The fry should be fed frequently, ideally every 4 hours.  Growing algae in the tank will provide an alternative food source to promote constant growth. 

The water should be changed often, ideally two 25% WC's per week.  A larger volume is necessary if the fry number exceeds a thousand.  In such cases, the fry should be split into two or more tanks.  Water condition is critical and poor water diminishes the growth potential of each fry.  Sponge filters should continue to be used.

6 day old fry:


© Neil Fletcher

The Second Two Weeks

Add microworms to the diet, as the fry should be gaining mass and developing their finnage quickly.  The colors you'll see are metallics, calicos and matts.  Continue feeding twice daily offerings of brine shrimp such that bellies look nice and plump within 10 minutes.  Microworms also last several hours in the fresh water, even longer than the brine shrimp.   The fry will like them less, but will still graze on them.  Feeding big chunks of homemade foods help to promote the gorging by a small number of robust feeders, while the smaller fry will be able to compete with their larger siblings. 

Microworms are readily grown in moist cornmeal or oatmeal, feeding on the yeast and bacteria that grow on the meal.  They can also be purchased via mail order.

The 2nd Month and Culling

Young fry:


© Neil Fletcher

By 4 weeks old, the young fry will start to look like goldfish.  This is the best time to start culling.  Culling is the act of selecting traits that will become high-quality adults.  Most commonly, culling is done by rejecting those fry that are obviously defective.  If you have 1,000 fry, you will likely raise from 10 to 50 highly selected fish.  Generally speaking, small faults will become large faults in a big fish, although a fish may be able to grow out of some of its faults.  Experience is the best teacher.  Observation of the developing fish over time is the only way to become expert at choosing which fry to keep, and which to cull.

Now that only a fraction of the fish remain, WC's and feeding become less of a burden.  Long finned fry tend to grow more slowly than short finned fry.  For the long finned fish to grow adequately, they should have their own tanks.  Feeding live foods exclusively is probably the best way to get these fish to develop a deep body.  Under suboptimal feeding conditions, the fish end up with long fins and small bodies.

The Next 4 Months

Continue to feed heavily, change the water often and make your final cull.  Goldfish fry grow as quickly as their feeding schedule allows.  The more food you provide, the faster they'll grow.  Those varieties that develop deep bodies, or headgrowth need this heavy feeding the most.  For this reason, it's vital to keep the water as pristine and clean as often as possible.

As the fish grows, power filters can be used to replace the sponge filters, however, use care to prevent too much current.  In general, fish over 3 months should be able to tolerate power filters.  If the fish don't seem ready for the current, try again in a couple of weeks or so.

The procedure described above will select a top 1% of the Goldfish that you raised from the original spawn. The Goldfish breeder soon realizes what "one in a million" truly means!