I have a group of sheepshead minnows in a 55 gallon tank along with mummichog, striped killifish and sailfin molly. The sheepshead minnows have spawned several times and produced vaible eggs. I've not yet seen fry but based on the feeding level in the tank I doubt the fry last long. I have only one brackish tank but would like to raise some of the fry.

I would like any suggestions on how to segregate the fryor eggs from the adults and at what time. Also what type of food would young sheephead minnows require?

I have a group of sheepshead minnows in a 55 gallon tank along with mummichog, striped killifish and sailfin molly. The sheepshead minnows have spawned several times and produced vaible eggs. I've not yet seen fry but based on the feeding level in the tank I doubt the fry last long. I have only one brackish tank but would like to raise some of the fry.

I would like any suggestions on how to segregate the fryor eggs from the adults and at what time. Also what type of food would young sheephead minnows require?

I would place some sinking spawning mops in the 55 gallon and then pick the eggs out of them for raising in another tank or one of those hang on the side nursery things. You could also remove the whole mop and move it to the nursery aquarium. The fry will probably need baby brine shrimp as a first food.

What always has worked well for me for a variety of Cyprinodon was a simple spawning mop with the conditioned breeding pair in a 5 gal.

Just drop a mop in in the morning and pull it out at night to replace with a new one.

Place the days spawning mop in a gallon jar or 2.5 gallon and airate this really well.
Eggs hatch in a 7 to 10 days. Feed the fry on BBS and sifted daphina in a growout tank.

Considering the group of voracious fish you've got you'll have to be quick to get any eggs out, mops or not unless you set up a separate tank or container.

Mike Lucas

It is interesting to me that you have mummichog in an aquarium. Drewish and I saw some and wanted to catch them but we thought that they required brackish water at least part of the year in order to survive, I guess we were wrong about that. I know what I'm going to collect this week!

It is interesting to me that you have mummichog in an aquarium. Drewish and I saw some and wanted to catch them but we thought that they required brackish water at least part of the year in order to survive, I guess we were wrong about that. I know what I'm going to collect this week!

Still Pretty brackish Enneacanthus. They are tolorant of varied salinity but do best in your typical 1.005 to 1.012 conditions.

It is interesting to me that you have mummichog in an aquarium. Drewish and I saw some and wanted to catch them but we thought that they required brackish water at least part of the year in order to survive, I guess we were wrong about that. I know what I'm going to collect this week!

Still Pretty brackish Enneacanthus. They are tolorant of varied salinity but do best in your typical 1.005 to 1.012 conditions.

Unless you get the C. v. hubbsi. I had these once. They are really a very differnt animal in shape and behaviour. I would like to head down and see these again some time.

It is interesting to me that you have mummichog in an aquarium. Drewish and I saw some and wanted to catch them but we thought that they required brackish water at least part of the year in order to survive, I guess we were wrong about that. I know what I'm going to collect this week!

I target the specific gravity for this tank at 1.010. All has been well since I set this tank up. If I remember correctly about a year ago.

Considering the group of voracious fish you've got you'll have to be quick to get any eggs out, mops or not unless you set up a separate tank or container.

Oddly enough many of the eggs lasted a very long time (well developed). In most cases the fish deposited eggs at the edge of rock outcroppings and in some cases in the gravel at the base of fake plants. Never on the plants themselves. For this reason I wondered if mops would be favored.

I have an additional tank I can set up to rear the eggs and young. I'll give the mops a try and get them out quickly.

Thanks for all of your advice.

Hmmm... We used to keep them in full strength seawater at the Gulfarium, and they bred like bunnies. We didn't even really pay much attention to them, so prolific were they, and despite plenty of other fish in the tanks we were always up to our eyeballs in surviving fry.
No, scratch that. By "tanks" I meant big outdoor pools which had algae in them. We kept the pupfish in them for their pretty blue & orange color, sure, but also for algae control, which they did very well. They're most ravenous algae eaters, to be sure. We didn't feed the fish or their fry, and I mean we NEVER fed them, but they had no problems sustaining themselves for many generations. The pools were filtered, by the way, and had high flow rates, so there wasn't much in the way of micro & meiofauna available for the fry, which must have learned to eat algae very early after metamorphosis.

I have a group of sheepshead minnows in a 55 gallon tank along with mummichog, striped killifish and sailfin molly. The sheepshead minnows have spawned several times and produced vaible eggs. I've not yet seen fry but based on the feeding level in the tank I doubt the fry last long. I have only one brackish tank but would like to raise some of the fry.
I would like any suggestions on how to segregate the fryor eggs from the adults and at what time. Also what type of food would young sheephead minnows require?

I had two 55gal brackish tanks that produced generation after generation of C. variegatus fry over a period of 7 years. Got the fry two ways: (1) The fish routinely laid their eggs in a sponge filter. When I saw eggs in it (they're rather hard-shelled), I'd take the sponge out and put it in a tray of water from the same tank into a window (to get "green water"). (2) If I saw larvae thrashing around in the tank, I'd siphon 'em up with a baster and squirt 'em into the aforementioned tray. Added infursoria culture to the green water tray, but I think they got just as much to eat from the bacteria in the sponge filter. After a week or so, I had lots of miniature C. v., big enough to eat flake, sinking tablet, or small frozen food. A couple of weeks after that, they were big enough to transfer to the adults' tanks without being eaten.

The tanks contained: Adinia xenica from the mouth of Escatawpa R., MS, Luciana parva from coastal NC, Poelicia latipinna from TX, MS & GA, and Cyprinodon variegatus from TX & MS.

I've actually got some of these myself and find them quite entertaining. I keep mine in low-range saltwater (specific gravity of about 1.018-1.020) and they have been doing just fine other than a slight flareup of some kind of fungus when I first got them. What exactly do the eggs of these guys look like? I've seen what looks like spawning behavior but never anything I could identify as an egg. I've been meaning to try and put a pair in a seperate tank with a mop and see if anything came of it.

I inadvertently caught a female sheepshead minnow while collecting ghost shrimp. It is huge with eggs & follows all of the mollies around. There is no male present & I am too far from the coast to bring her back. She seems to be very healthy & active but not able to release the load of eggs inside of her. Is there any hope for her?
Steve