Endler Fry Apex Predator required!

[prdad]

Heavily planted tank so hard to catch every last one of them without dismantling the tank (it only takes one female!) and lack of anywhere to put them while someone is available to rehome them.
New tank now purchased so plan now in place. Hopefully I'll empty the main tank over the next few weeks and move them on. Pretty impressive how prolific they are!!

 

[ElleDee]

Simple,

Why would you have both male and female in the same tank unless you wanted to breed them. From what i gather you have both sexes and had no plan in place for the offspring.

I think people underestimate the scale and speed of the problem.

When I had endlers there were only males for sale in the color morph I wanted (in other words, the breeder was protecting their line by not offering females), but more frequently I only see live-bearers sold in pairs if you are after particular colors. I'm not sure how people manage this if they aren't breeding for profit. I assume they quietly cull a lot of fish? It's definitely a math issue.

 

[Maf 2500]

In nature 99%+ of fish fry get eaten in the early stage of life. It is just what happens and is why egglayers tend to have a breeding strategy of hundreds or thousands of eggs per female. Livebearers have less offspring but at a slightly bigger size, but it is still natural for most of them to be eaten in the early stage. I don't see the difference between letting fish eat baby endlers or guppies or letting them eat baby cherry shrimp (which happens in every tank containing both shrimp and fish), or feeding them live brine shrimp, bloodworms or daphnia.

(I don't agree with deliberate live feeding of larger/older fish but that is not the question in this thread.)