18
Saving Livebearers' Fry the Natural Way
by Bob Berdoulay
From Gravel Gossip, Diamond State Aquarium Society, Delaware City
Aquarticles: http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/breeding/Berdoulay_Livebearers_Fry.html
Need a place for all those baby livebearers to hide? Instead of using breeding traps I load the
tank with a variety of plants that enable the fry to avoid being food for mom and dad. A
combination of bottom plants and floating plants gives the babies places to hang out until
they are big enough to not be considered food by the parents.
A few of the most common floating plants are riccia (Riccia fluitans), duckweed (Lemna
minor) and the fine leaved (a misnomer since this is a fern, this term should be fronds) water
sprite (Ceratopteris thalictroides). The first two are found worldwide, while water sprite is
to be found in the tropics. All of these plants are easy to maintain. They seem to do best in
water that is slightly acidic (pH 6.8), temperatures of 75-80° F, and like the water soft. The
lighting requirements are modest since they do not need a lot of light. The riccia and water
sprite are members of the fern group and will grow best if not under constant agitation.
Duckweed likewise prefers quiet waters and will grow rapidly.
The water sprite produces long trailing roots along with wide-spreading fronds that will provide your fry with places to hide. This plant grows rapidly and sends out daughter plantlets
on its fronds. Your tank surface can become quite overgrown in a short period of time and
pruning will be necessary. The riccia is also a fern and grows in a tangled mass at the surface, thus also providing shelter for the fry. The shading that is produced lowers the amount
of light reaching the substrate of the tank; therefore you need to think about shade tolerant
plants for the bottom plantings. Three choices come to mind. The water sprite can be planted
in the substrate and will grow in an upright position. Java fern (Microsorium pteropus), and/
or Java moss (Vesicularia dubyana), both from Southeast Asia, can be used in the tank by
attaching them to rocks or wood. I use Java moss in large clumps lying loose on the bottom
of a bare tank. This provides adequate shelter for fry on the bottom with the water sprite
doing the same at the surface.
A major drawback to using these floating plants is their rapid growth and thus covering the
entire surface of the water. This makes it difficult to feed your fish as they find it hard to
locate the flakes among the plants, or the flakes land on top of the plants and rot. It is necessary to keep some area of the surface clear of plants. I read about a solution to the problem
years ago, but I can?t remember where (that?s age!). It is fairly simple and will control the
plants, especially the duckweed. This device is the "plant barrier." The barrier is anything
that will contain the plants and prevent them from spreading over the entire surface of the
tank. I believe the original device I read about was made of soda straws, bent, and connected
end to end in various shapes and used to surround the plants. The problem was that the
straws would eventually fill with water and sink, thus freeing the plants. I made my barrier
from airline tubing and connected the ends with small pieces of hard plastic tubing. The
only shape I formed was a ring but it worked and never sank.
Try this natural way to provide hiding places for fry, I have found that I usually wind up
with plenty of young without having the trauma of moving the females in and out of breeding traps.