Breeding fish is fun, and can be immensly rewarding. It is typically easy to achieve and can also cover the cost of fish sundries, food and the like. Generally, fish can be split into 3 groups when we consider breeding; livebearers, egglayers with no parental care, and egglayers with parental care.

Livebearers give birth to living fish; they do not care for the young, but the fry are already considerably bigger than egglayers fry, and can fend for themselves just fine. Even new aquarists will have no problems breeding guppies, platies and swordtails. These are the standard ‘community fish’ and if you are considering a fish tank, these may very well be your first species. Breeding requires no special treatment except a LACK of predators.

Species that do not tend their eggs and young will often feed upon them, and therefore breeding is best acheived by removing the parents immediately after spawning. This group includes most tetras, barbs, rainbowfish and killifish. Some of these species can be bred in small numbers in very thickly planted tanks, especially when fed consistently with newly hatched artemai nauplii.

Many species do show parental care for eggs, fry or both, including many cichlids and anabantids. This group of fish can be very aggressive towards tankmates whilst breeding; aquariums must have plenty of hiding places for other individuals, or in some cases no other species present.

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