Thinking of selling the D. macs

Becca

Becca

Members
I'm toying with the idea of selling my mated pair of Dicrossus maculatus in hopes of them finding a home where water quality is more conducive to their eggs hatching and wigglers surviving.

Is anyone even interested?

These guys are beautiful little fish and seem to be hard to come by. What little I can find on their reproduction habits suggests one male will fertilize the eggs of several females within a day or two and then vacate the premises. Parental behavior of the females is improved by the presence of dither fish and the fish like soft water with a low pH. Sex ratios (at least captive bred) are skewed towards females.

It seems a waste to have them spawning every 4-6 weeks without any fry surviving much past hatching.
 
Becca

Becca

Members
chriscoli said:
How big a tank do you think they need?

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20-29. I've kept them in a 6 gallon and a 29 gallon - they started spawning almost as soon as I put them in the bigger tank. The male is about 3-3.5" (including fins) and the female is about 1.5". The only time they get mean with each other is when the male starts pursuing the female for spawning. They are completely non-aggressive with other fish (unless defending eggs) that I've had in the tank. They hardly even bothered the apistos I had in there for a while.

They are awesome fish and hard to find. I was going to try to find some extra females to see if having a harem might improve spawning success, but every time I see them listed for sale and contact the seller, I'm told they're sold out.
 
Becca

Becca

Members
Well, I guess there's interest. I have some big decisions to make about these little guys.
 
captmicha

captmicha

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I read that putting non-aggressive tetras in as your dither fish will increase your fry surviving. What did you try as dither fish? And acidity as low as 3.6, but aged water for low conductivity.
 
Becca

Becca

Members
captmicha said:
I read that putting non-aggressive tetras in as your dither fish will increase your fry surviving. What did you try as dither fish? And acidity as low as 3.6, but aged water for low conductivity.
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Yeah - I'm in MoCo on public water and it is REALLY hard with pH in the mid-high 7's. The best I can ever get it is 6.8. I don't have an RO unit and my husband keeps telling me that if I set up a rain barrel he's going to consider it an ideal place to hide my body :eek:.

They're in there with ember tetras, among other things, but nothing that eats their eggs. The eggs hatch into wigglers, and the wigglers disappear... that's when the male doesn't eat them right after they're laid.

I did manage to keep a few alive artificially for about a week, but the one that did go free swimming managed to escape the breeder box... sigh.
 
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