A Splendida Success By Rodney & Deborah Ralph
The evening was upon us and we were just about to watch a movie when, out of the corner of an eye, some funny goings on were spotted in our community tank. Their water was 26
degrees celsius and neutral. Our male Melanotaenia splendida splendida was showing off, dancing around with his fins wide open wide in front of his female. But, there was nowhere for them to spawn. In a flash we grabbed some spare Java Moss we had floating around and broke a small 2" x 2" piece of foam off and hung the moss over it in a corner of the community tank, to form an instant spawning mop of moss.
Prom then on we had two programmes to watch. The male kept dancing around the hanging Java Moss and darting back and forth to the female trying to entice her to come up and see him some time, which she did. This went on for ages, he never seemed to tire.
Next morning the Java Moss was inspected and unbelievably there were a large number of small clear eggs there, we thought for sure they would have been cleaned up by the rest of the tank's inhabitants by this time. The moss with eggs were transferred into another tank for hatching and another moss mop was set up, which was then removed from the community tank the following day with even more eggs in it. The temperature in the 2' hatching tank was 27 degrees celsius.
We did not keep the light away from the tank, (in fact it received about 2 hours of sunlight a day). A small amount of infusoria was put into the hatching tank on the 4th day in readiness and the eggs started hatching on the 5th day and were still hatching up to 9 days after being put in. The try are free swimming upon hatching and from only 2 days worth of Java Moss being hung from the community tank we were no doubt pleased when about 200 fry hatched. A small number of eggs went fungus but most of them hatched. A number also would have been eaten by other fish in the community tank, before being removed, but at the time we did not want to disturb the breeding pair.
Intusoria, liquid fry food and other micron dried foods were given 4-6 times daily and increased as more hatched. The fry mainly swim in the top 3" of the tank and we always left some Java Moss in the tank because they seemed to be feeding from it. From 3-4 weeks old they grow quite rapidly and are able to eat live Daphnia and Cyclops. Their rainbow shape and fins become more noticeable at 6 weeks old.