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Breeding Celestial Pearl Danio (Danio margaritatus)

i managed to breed mine successfully but most of them got eaten. I had two slates that had riccia on it, it grew to a certain height that the fish started to breed in it. Each week when i did a water change i would shake the slates in a bucket and would always find 10+ frys in there. I didn't do anything special, i fed them twice a day with TetraMin and i let them get on with it.
 
About a month ago, I decided I wanted to start breeding from the 20 adult CPD I have in my 100l high tech tank, I selected 2 of the biggest females, and 1 male with good fin markings. I had a load of moss from a shrimp tank and some fast growing stems floating on top to soak up any nutrients, so put tank water into a bare bottom 30l tank, only filling halfway, perhaps 7 inch deep. Fed parents on frozen bloodworms for 2 weeks, though I no don't think it is necessary tbh. Did no water changes, just topped up water. After 2 weeks removed parents, and thought I had had no luck, but left it sitting anyhow. However after approx 3 or so days I started to see a few fry. Now I am 2 weeks on, and I have at least 50 fry that I can count. I have an airpump in tank, and am adding about 3 litres of water a week to the tank. Feeding on liquifry and tetra min baby flakes. Largest fry are about 6mm, smallest 3mm. I'm delighted!
 
Hi Omen, nice but I would recommend infusoria else they will die or only few will make it. At least I had little luck with liquifry and using it as side food now. I do not filter water in my tank I have only 7 fry there which I recovered from main tank and infusoria is growing in my fry tank primarily. I did help it with infusoria culture. Liquifry helps infusoria to grow as well. I just change water here and will put filter back when larger enough feeding on normal food.
 
Well done on the success. I guess for me I never took such precautions and ended up with a few successful breeding but the sad story is that during a water change I probably emptied the tank water with the fry in it.

I eventually found 1 left over which grew to just under adult size and then went missing (jumped)

These are lovely fish and I would try to breed them in a later stage.
 
I would be paranoid about siphoning off any fry, so I don't do any water changes! I started with an 30L arc tank, loads of moss, and loads of stems. Idea being that the fry will be provided some food from the moss, and the stems will soak up any nutrients, so no need for water changes. I just add another 2-3L of water a week, and I reckon byt the time that tank is full (in another 5 weeks or so) the fry will be big enough to spot when water changing at that point. I intend to have at least 100 CPD in my 100L high tech tank, so this breeding will be going on some time I reckon! 😀

Will try and let you all know how they are getting on.

Conor
 
Quick update, I still haven't done any water changes, and have a further 6-8L of water to add to the tank. Fry are getting on great! Just did a quick count, and I could see 40! The largest ones are now about 10mm and resemble a miniture CPD. Smallest are probably 8mm and still look like indistinguishable fry. Feeding ground up flakes, although they seem to refuse this food sometimes, so I suspect they are feeding on other tank inhabitants, either daphnia, or grindal worms (both of which must have come on some of the moss from other tanks).

I reckon another 3-4 weeks, and they will be ready to join gen pop in the big tank 😀
 
Omen, inject some infusoria if you can and prepare microworms already. They could deplete infusoria in tank quite fast. They refuse to eat anything not moving. I am feeding microworms 6-7x a day and even some smaller (2-3weeks younger been eating them).
 
The adults only get dried foods, so I will try to get the fry eating the same. I figure they will eat whatever is given when they get hungry enough.
 
Most natural way I guess 🙂

I would like to start a CPD tank in the future when I have the space. THey are delightful fish.
 
I have 6 CPD's in a 28l planted nano (2m/4f)with about a dozen RCS. Had them almost 2 months and the males seem to be colouring up nicely. Great to watch. 😀

Signs of courtship but no signs of fry.I have a small group of frogbit for surface cover for fry but no signs yet. Early days though, they are just maturing nicely. Fed on Hikari Micro pellets and regular treats of frozen micro bloodworm.
 
If you move the fish out of the tank to a seperate tank, you should have a decent amount of fry within 3 weeks. The biggest issue I found was that the parents ate the eggs and fry. The females scatter eggs pretty much constantly as far as I can tell, I had 2F 1M in a tank, and have ended up with perhaps 40 out of 50 fry intitially. The ones that died had swim bladder disease.
 
i bred these a few years back. Best way i found was to set up a tank similar to what you have in post 1.

I used:

2 wool spawning mops. 1 floating 1 sunk.
Plastic grid in bottom of tank

The plastic grid is a hobby thing sometimes called 'plastic canvas'. I cut it larger than the tank bottom, so that it bows upward when placed in bottom of tank. I use this to avoid egg eating. the holes of the canvas need to be a couple of mm so the eggs fall through and fish cant get to them.

i place a female in tank for 2-3 days and feed well (grindal worm red crumb). I then put the male in and leave for 1-2 days. Whenever i see eggs, i remove the male the following morning.

Fry fed on liquifry and microworm and moved onto grindal worm when juvenile size.
 
I found that they had to be kept away from the eggs to get a reasonable ammount of fry, grid in the bottom of tank or layer of marbles.
 
Probably a bit late on this, but....
I started with about 15 adult fish - 5 females and 10 males - all conditioned on frozen bloodworm. I put a mass of Java Moss in the centre of the main tank, (temp 25.8 deg) and left if for 4 days......observed spawning every morning as the lighting dimmed up. The moss shouldn't be tied down or too compressed - the fish like to get right into it to lay their eggs. On 5th day, carefully lifted the java into a container with system water, and transferred this to 15 litre breeding tank with air-driven filter. Observed first fry after about 4 days, and because I included multiple spawnings, this carried on for about 2 weeks, with more becoming visible each day.
Fry seemed to get all the food they needed from micro feeds in the moss, but I did supplement with de-capsulated brine eggs from about second week. I've done this twice and ended up with almost exactly the same number of fish from each batch - about 30.
Anyone wanting some strong, young fish, let me know...
 
Well finally I have fry in my nano. 5-6 fry have been regulary seen hanging out at the back of the tank above the stems over the weekend. The fry about 2-4mm and silvery grey in colour. The tank has been running about 4 months and fish were juvies when added.

Funny thing is they got spotted whilst looking for cherry shrimplets which I haven't spotted yet. 2nd berried shrimp about to drop soon.

I have no plans to attempt a rescue right now, the tank runs with a "survival of the fittest" policy. I will be attempting organsised CPD breeding after I move house in a couple of months.
 
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