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Breeding Fundulus


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#1 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 18 June 2018 - 08:19 PM

I received a pair of Fundulus cingulatus about a month ago that were collected in Alabama.  They are in a 10g tank and this evening I pulled eggs from their spawning mops.  Additionally, I recently starting working with Fundulus chrysotus again (both a regular strain that were locally collected and a melanistic strain that were line bred by someone else).  I was also able to pull eggs this evening from the spawning mops that are in a 30g tank housing a group of the melanistic strain.  Typically for native killifish, I put the eggs in a small glass container to water incubate and do daily water changes until the fry hatch.  At the convention I purchased a German Breeding Ring from Swiss Tropicals that I will attempt to use for incubation on a batch of killifish eggs soon and leave the fry there for the first few weeks of life.



#2 mattknepley

mattknepley
  • NANFA Member
  • Smack-dab between the Savannah and the Saluda.

Posted 19 June 2018 - 05:49 AM

Congrats, FishDaddy! Keep us posted...
Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."

#3 swampfish

swampfish
  • NANFA Member

Posted 21 June 2018 - 10:19 AM

I have kept Fundulus cingulatus I collected in the Tate's Hell area of Florida since 2005. I have found that these and the aquarium strain of F. cingulatus I kept before that to live best in my rainwater with a pH of 5.0 to 6.0. Previously, they gradually died off after several months of keeping them in my well water at pH 6.8. 

 

I have not collected eggs, preferring to rotate water hyacinth that I keep in a bog pond filled with rainwater to a stock tank for hatch out. They like to lay their eggs on water hyacinth roots. I also get a few young each year in the bog pond. I have found the adults to be very predatory on their fry.

 

Good luck,

Phil Nixon

Illinois



#4 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 21 June 2018 - 09:52 PM

I have kept Fundulus cingulatus I collected in the Tate's Hell area of Florida since 2005. I have found that these and the aquarium strain of F. cingulatus I kept before that to live best in my rainwater with a pH of 5.0 to 6.0. Previously, they gradually died off after several months of keeping them in my well water at pH 6.8. 

 

I have not collected eggs, preferring to rotate water hyacinth that I keep in a bog pond filled with rainwater to a stock tank for hatch out. They like to lay their eggs on water hyacinth roots. I also get a few young each year in the bog pond. I have found the adults to be very predatory on their fry.

 

Good luck,

Phil Nixon

Illinois

 

Good feedback - thanks Phil!  I have a similar pH level in my water to yours so I will look to bring down the pH for the cingulatus tank.  Do you have any idea of the preferred conductivity or what your normal conductivity is?



#5 gerald

gerald
  • Global Moderator
  • Wake Forest, North Carolina

Posted 26 June 2018 - 01:11 PM

That's surprising to me that any Fundulus species would "need" (or "do better" in) soft acidic water.  In other respects they're not too evolutionarily distant from their estuarine Fundulus cousins, and given the frequent up and down sea level history of the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plain, it seems odd that they'd become physiologically "obligate" soft water fish in a short time.  Most of our other Coastal Plain blackwater fish (Enneacanthus, Umbra, Acantharchus, Aphredoderus) do just fine at neutral pH and moderate TDS and hardness.  There are of course tropical fish that need soft, acidic water for long-term health and breeding, but they're mainly species with a longer-term evolutionary history in those water conditions (Amazon, Orinoco, Sumatra ...)


Gerald Pottern
-----------------------
Hangin' on the Neuse
"Taxonomy is the diaper used to organize the mess of evolution into discrete packages" - M.Sandel


#6 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 06 August 2018 - 09:16 PM

A quick update on the Fundulus cingulatus breeding - I have a couple of dozen fry at various sizes/stages with more eggs waiting to hatch.  They have been consistently breeding in my normal water parameters of 7.8 pH and about 280 uS conductivity.  I have been using the water incubation method described above, however I have not had luck with the breeding ring so at this point I am sticking with my known approach.



#7 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 08 November 2020 - 09:40 PM

As an update, I continue to maintain the same line of F.  cingulatus.  I have about a dozen and have recently started actively pulling eggs from the mops and raising the fry again.  Additionally, I recently collected some F. confluentus so I welcome any tips on breeding this species.  Currently I have them in a 55g full saltwater (which is where they were collected) tank with spawning mops.



#8 lilyea

lilyea
  • NANFA Member
  • Peace River Watershed, Central Florida, USA

Posted 14 July 2021 - 09:11 AM

As an update, I still have the same line of cingulatus and shared several pairs with friends this past week.  One interesting (at least to me) is that I have been feeding them Reef Nutrition's Chroma Boost TDO (x-small pellet) among other feeds.  The astaxanthin in the RN feed (often used for coloring up clownfish and highlighting the reds/oranges in fish in general) has really made the finnage in the males super bright (more like what you would expect to see on the fins of a F. rubrifons in breeding colors).



#9 Robert Lamb

Robert Lamb
  • NANFA Member
  • Chattanooga, TN

Posted 14 July 2021 - 05:27 PM

As an update, I still have the same line of cingulatus and shared several pairs with friends this past week.  One interesting (at least to me) is that I have been feeding them Reef Nutrition's Chroma Boost TDO (x-small pellet) among other feeds.  The astaxanthin in the RN feed (often used for coloring up clownfish and highlighting the reds/oranges in fish in general) has really made the finnage in the males super bright (more like what you would expect to see on the fins of a F. rubrifons in breeding colors).

This sounds like something I'll have to try on my F. zebrinus





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