Can anything else breed in the same tank as breeding bristlenose/guppies?

[Acara19]

I plan on getting a 40 breeder somewhere in the future, and breeding bristlenose and guppies in it. can anything else breed in there? if so what? I already looked into shrimp and ramshorn snails, the shrimp would probably get eaten by the guppies, plus i plan on growing plants to sell in there as well, and I don't think people would want ramshorn snails to come with their plants, even if i did breed those pretty red ones.

 

[IndianaSam]

I’ve successfully kept cherry shrimp with guppies. Maybe the guppies ate a few shrimplets, but the population absolutely grew. It also depends on how many guppies are in the tank and how heavily it’s planted.

Maybe you could also breed some dwarf cichlids.

 

[Freakgecko]

it Also depends on if you will be pulling guppy fry or not, as dwarf cichlids often are micropredators, and will eat any fry they can catch. My nanacara pair destroyed a whole bunch of cherry shrimp, even the adults that I didn’t think they could eat.

 

[Acara19]

yep i do plan on pulling as many fry i can get
maybe i can do some sort of apistos or rams?

 

[jonclark96]

You might be able to get away with another species in the tank, but all that activity may preclude fish from breeding. The easy answer is to add another tank!

 

[Becca]

Given the volume of offspring produced by both guppies and bristlenose, you could end up crashing the tank. Also, most dwarf cichlids prefer very different water parameters than guppies do. Rams are especially sensitive to water quality, and many varieties of Apistos are, as well.

 

[IndianaSam]

Becca makes some good points about water quality.

If it were me, I'd probably just stick with the guppies and bristlenoses. Once you've spawned enough of them, you can always sell off the fry and breeding stock to finance the next fish you want to spawn.

 

[Acara19]

Here's what i planned the tank out to be: (don't mind the crude illustration)

40 breeder, pleco caves evenly spaced out on one side, a decent amount of driftwood
a piece of driftwood would separate the substrate from the bare-bottomed portion of the tank, which would be filled with riccia rhenana, since riccia rhenana sinks unlike fluitans.
red root floaters would be growing on only one side of the tank so I can grow other plants on the other side, and those plants would get all the light they can get without it getting diluted through the floating plants.
I'd have more driftwood on the other side of the tank so I can grow plants that attach their roots to driftwood and grow that way.
I'd get chips of driftwood and tie flame moss to them, and then tie said chips to a larger piece of driftwood, so I can grow and easily sell clumps of flame moss.
The pogostemon and bucephalandra are self explanatory, I'll just have those growing on pieces of driftwood as well.
Since I'll be breeding guppies and bristlenose in there, the sea of riccia would serve as a good nursery/hiding spot for the fry, if I miss some or don't pull them in time. I can sell any extra riccia if it grows out of hand.
My plan is for everything in the tank to be profitable, but still have a nice looking tank while I'm at it.
I'll try not to let the reproduction of the guppies/plecos overwhelm the filtration system, and I definitely won't add a ton at a time, probably just going to start with a few plecos and a few guppies first anyway.
I plan on running two sponge filters in there as well.
And thanks everyone for the tips, I'll revise some of the stuff accordingly.

 

[Freakgecko]

Honestly, if this is a breeding tank, your best bet is to go simple: bare bottomed, sponge filter, heater, some driftwood for the plecos, breeding caves, and some good floating plants. That’s just my opinion though. I can tell you that catching pleco fry out of anything but a bare bottom tank is a nightmare.

 

[Acara19]

yep definitely, even the long tailed babies are still super fast
I saw one guy did it where he took them as eggs and put the clutch in an egg tumbler, they all hatched that way and he raised the batch from there in another tank
maybe I could try that if I see a male sitting on eggs, but then again if I miss some I can just leave em in till they're big enough to see
unless I can siphon them, or would siphoning hurt pleco fry?
I mean I could breed ramshorn snails in there, but like I touched on before, I don't think people (regardless of the looks of the snail) would want snails with the plants I'm growing in there.

 

[Freakgecko]

Once they leave the cave, they scatter. Siphoning then wouldn’t be that easy really. Also, getting the eggs out of the cave is no easy task. They’re quite sticky, and the male will really cement himself in there. Those spines do a great job at keeping himself in there

 

[JLW]

Profitable, and you're choosing guppies and ancistrus?
You should throw some angelfish in there while you're at it -- you'll corner the market on the "buck a bag fish."

Seriously, the fish you've picked to try to breed for money are a bit too easy to do so -- you'll never, ever, ever actually get any return on them.

 

[Acara19]

what if I breed things like super red longfins and some sort of high end guppy? also come to think of it would angelfish in there work or would they just eat the guppies? (probably a dumb question)

 

[Becca]

Soooo many questions...

How do you plan to keep the red root floaters where you want them? How do you plan to keep Riccia down on the substrate (in water, it's a floating plant and planting it on substrate will require restraining it somehow, not to mention very bright light). Flame moss requires pretty bright light, too. If you're going to have good lighting in a 40B you are probably better off going with 2 strips. Then you might need CO2 because, without it, you're likely to grow as much algae as moss.

As for selling riccia (you're most likely to find fluitans, rather than rhenana, though telling the difference isn't all that easy anyway), it's not commonly sought after because it clogs up the surface, plugs filters, gets everywhere, etc... I know from personal experience. I literally can't give the stuff away and I don't even know how I ended up with it in the first place. It spreads ridiculously easy. How do you plan to keep it out of your flame moss? That's definitely a thing.

You might find some people who will pay good money to have buce shipped, but in terms of bringing it to auctions, it usually doesn't go for much and it's an extremely slow grower. Many of us give it away or include it in "grab bags."

What are you going to do with 100-200 baby plecos that nobody wants? No kidding, most club members can't give them away unless they're an uncommon/very fancy variety. Have you thought about the damage that "fast money" breeders do to the few remaining small shops that still carry interesting and diverse varieties of fish?

If you're going to be in this hobby, be in this hobby because you enjoy it enough to go for broke on it.

I'm not trying to discourage you from keeping fish, rather I'm trying to get you to think about whether you're doing this because of the joy fishkeeping brings you. If you're doing it to turn a profit, odds are you'll end up disappointed.

I'm also trying to encourage you to think of the investment it will take to do what you want to do with this tank - whether it's the time to do daily water changes when you've got 3 batches of fry growing out in one tank (BNPs do not eat their young), spending the money on lighting that'll actually do what you want to do with the plans, investing a few hundred in a CO2 setup, etc... There's no such thing as turning a quick profit in this hobby. For every dollar's worth of stuff I might sell at a meeting or on forums, I'm spending at least $3 more on keeping my plants and animals happy and healthy, and that's not even considering the initial investment in getting everything up and running or the time it takes to keep it running.

 

[Freakgecko]

Completely agree with the above. Bristlenose of almost any variety are a hard sell around here. I just sold my breeding pair because I was so sick of the fry. I have them in every tank at all sizes. I couldn’t give them away.

Guppies are a weird one. The big strains will sell for a bit, and then be unable to be moved at all. They’re like Angels, as Josh said. The new morph pops up, everyone breeds it fast, they sell, then saturate the market, and no one wants them.

If you’re looking for species to get your feet wet into breeding, then these aren’t a bad choice. If you’re looking to have a display tank, then breeding isn’t what I would recommend unless willing to pull adults to other tanks and such, often time tearing apart your hardscape. If you’re looking to make a profit, as stated, bad species to make any money on unfortunately.

If you are looking to start breeding to sell and find your own display tanks, then you have to breed what others want, and keep the fish you like in your display tanks. I’ve breed Africans before simply because they sell and I can put that money into the fish I like, South American peaceful cichlids. I often will grab up groups of free fish on here, because their a species I like, however, the original seller had no luck moving them. They may have a cool fish, but the demand doesn’t exist, leaving them with 10’s or even 100’s of fry no one will buy

 

[Acara19]

As for red root floaters, I plan on using some sort of airline tubing as a barrier to prevent it from growing past a certain point.
like I said before, rhenana, while it's gonna be harder to find, sinks rather than floats. I can always just move clumps to another tank or give it away if it grows too much, and even if I can't find someone to give it to, there's always just throwing clippings away if there's TOO much.
I do understand the costs involved, and I do plan to have a LARGE amount of money put aside, yes I've burned through all my money on a project before but still had fun doing it. I'd be fine with doing daily water changes, I already do daily on my 30 and 20 long, housing my future breeding groups of longfin albino ancistrus and blue eye lemon ancistrus, as well as platinum and mosaic guppies. those are generic breeding tanks, bare bottomed and everything.
Yes I am just getting my feet wet into breeding, and I do want to start with something easy, but this tank's gonna come up in the future when I have a bit more money, and even if I don't make much money off the things breeding in there, I'll still have an interesting tank that's at least more aesthetically pleasing than a bare bottomed breeder tank.
I breed because it's interesting, growing out fry and watching breeding behaviors and all, plus it gives me something to do when I don't have much else to. I understand I probably can't make a good profit off of this unless I go extremely large scale like segrest farms or something, which as a 15 year old I can't, this is just to get me a bit of money to save up till I can get an actual job.
If I do end up making some money off of this, I'll probably end up spending it on an actual display tank, or saving it up for other things I want/need.

 

[FishEggs]

A slight current across the top of the water will keep the red root floater to one side of the tank. They will still continue to expand and you will have to remove some but if you force it to stay on one side too long it will pile up on itself and choke the lower level and cause it to rot.
I have red root floater when you want some.

 

[JLW]

I will tell you a story about guppies. I bought a FIRST IMPORT pair of Japanese tanaka candletail guppies. I do not want to admit what I paid for them, but let's just say that by the time I landed them from Japan, they were up in the triple digits (they weren't the ONLY thing I got, mind, but .... ). I sold some of the F1s as soon as they were sexable, and while I couldn't sell them for anywhere near what I paid for the parents, volume helps, right? Someone in Raleigh, it turns out, also brought in some, and he was selling them, too. They were going for like $60 a pair at auctions. WOOHOO.

In about 2-3 months, I was using them for feeders.

I don't even have that fish anymore.

Fish market is fickle, and things come and go ... I've seen gorgeous, breeding pairs of adult angelfish sell for $5. The fish market is not something to get involved in to make money -- you do it because you like it, and selling things off helps. Plus, your reputation and the quality of fish you offer matters. I'll pay $5 for a red velvet sword from Frank Cowherd, and $20 for a pair of wild Xiphs from John Mangan. Unknown seller with those misspelt Xiphophorus "nezsquirts," hah, no, thanks.