Breeding Glowlight Tetra

[Liquid_Pyro]

Hey I acquired some glowlight tetra's (Hemigrammus Erthrozonus) in a trade a little while ago and noticed how chubby the females have become and assume they are full of eggs.

I am just curious to know if anyone one else has bred these guys.

I have read that you need a lower pH of around 6 to induce breeding, however my normal tap water is around 7.2 pH, would adding peat moss to the water be the only way to get these guys to spawn?

They are in a 10 gal tank right now with a divider, 2 males are on one side while the females are on the other. I am going to try conditioning them on live foods for the next week or so and then move one pair into a breeding tank with normal tap water to see what happens. That is unless someone has already tried this and found it doesn't work.

I have only found one account of someone trying to breed these guys on the internet so far:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060221164505/http://www.pvas.com/articles/snell-glowlight.htm

 

[soobie]

Mine spawn all the time in my community tank, but they and the rest of their tankmates always eat the eggs and/or fry so I haven't actually seen fry. I don't do anything special to get them to spawn, just a normal healthy tank with nitrates under 15,temperature of 74, pH about 6.8-7.0. I do have very soft water, GH and KH both are 1. I do about 30% changes weekly, with tapwater and Prime.

The article you linked seems like a workable setup. The trickiest part would probably be providing food that's small enough for them to eat. Like I said, I haven't seen fry, but the eggs are TINY. Speck of dust tiny.

The females seem like to get in a clump of plants to actually spawn, after leading the males on a chase around the tank, so maybe add some real or silk plants to your spawning tank. Providing a good big clump of Java moss would probably be great for the fry, or at least some sort of grate to let the eggs fall through and keep the adults from eating them.

I have an old (really bad) video showing my glowlight tetras spawning on my YouTube channel. Here. Sorry about the quality, but the camera I had back then took terrible video. And the tank had just been moved; the video was taken half an hour after it was set up, and I hadn't even put the background on yet! The actual egg release takes place right at the end, when the female darts under the crypt leaf and briefly flips upside down.

Good luck!

 

[Liquid_Pyro]

Cool thanks, I have read of a trick to capture eggs: find a shallow container that fits just inside the bottom of the tank. Then put a grate on top big enough for the eggs to fall through and put java moss on top of that. I was also thinking of making some yarn spawning mops to hang down from the surface.

The main concern is if my pH is too high for them to spawn...

 

[Liquid_Pyro]

Since there seems to be little response on this thread so far, maybe someone can let me know if there are any popular forums more geared towards tetras?

 

[Cerianthus]

Cool thanks, I have read of a trick to capture eggs: find a shallow container that fits just inside the bottom of the tank. Then put a grate on top big enough for the eggs to fall through and put java moss on top of that. I was also thinking of making some yarn spawning mops to hang down from the surface.

The main concern is if my pH is too high for them to spawn...

How high is your pH and GH?

Have you heard of Eheim Ehfifix (green, reusable) product which I used as spawning mop on many different spawning tanks, including killies.
Stretch them to cover the bottom of one of compartment containing female.
Add males to female when ready and remove all of them when done. Should provide extra circulation on spawned compartment.
Once they start and all are well, they will continue to spawn as someone already mentioned above.
You can even use layer of marbles but spawning mop/plants always worked better.

Think about preparing fry food as well. I always had containers/jars with circulation on widow sills yr around for constant supply of fry foods back in the days. Even back yard had containers/tanks to yield live insect larvae during applicable seasons..
Spawning tanks also had full/thick layer of algae growing on 3 sides as such provided natural environment for live fry foods, even adult food, to survive/multiply.
You diy your own fry food as well and rotate with other fry foods on the market.

Look into Peat Moss as water softner which has same/similar effect as Black Water Extract mentioned in provided link. Bag of Peat Moss from Garden Center will be lot cheaper than Black Water Extract. Use nylon net bag/stocking(?) to apply peat moss to filter/tank and replace e them as necessary.
OR you can just prepare another large container continuously being treated with Peat Moss to soften.

You should also be ready to provide other tanks as rearing tanks since 5G will become too small to support all surviving juvies .

Hope this helped and Good Luck with the spawn!