Maul voll, und wie geht es nun weiter?

Hallo CHK,
My reply will be in english, I hope you don't mind, my Deutsch is far worse
Congrats with your Ctenops!
I have bred 3x Ctenops now so maybe I can give you some information that may help you.
All 3 times the grown animals live in a tank full with plants...and I mean FULL! Almost no space for swimming (and little space to be agressive)The pH is 6,0 , tapwater with lots of strong peat and CO2. Everytime within 2 weeks the male had a mouth full.
In my experience the best way to rase the little ones is to bring the male to a little tank (20 liter) with the same waterchemistry and lots of floating plants.
I did that aprox. 2 days before letting go the fry. (on the 12th day of breeding, total breeding time 16-20 days. In all cases the fry were let go over a period of 2-3 days!
The fry are easy to raise with fresh live cyclops, live microworms and freshly hatched artemia. The cyclops is some risk with parasites from the water you get it from but I never had any problems with it. In the beginning I feed many times a day and refresh the water every day. When the fry are 2 weeks old I feed 2 times a day, so less waterchanges too
When they get older they will eat frozen cyclops, bosmiden, Moina salina and other small food. After a time they even eat dry food, very easy
The trick is to raise them to full grown animals...
My firts fry all died in a weeks time when they were 3-4 cm big, I realy don't know why
Now I have a thank with more than 100 fry, from 2 different males all about 1 cm big. They are doing fine....but for how long....I'm going to test UV on the tank, maybe that will help.
Good luck wirth your Ctenops! Keep me posted
Greetz Lydia

Hi Lydia,
thanks for your quick response. I have heard that you have bred Ctenops. So I hoped you would answer.
One thing I do not know is since when it has the mouth full.
My water chemistry is much less complicated. Since I am Channa breeder I hardly do care. I do have medium hard tap water pH around 7. The tank is structured with large root parts and a lot of Wasserlinsen (Lemna minor). Hardly any other plants. The tank is setup like that for 4 months now.
Only a little aggressiveness could be stated. And maybe only 1 loss to mourn since then (not quite sure. the 4th fish in that tank is hard to detect).
So will set up a separate tank and I place the male there with a lot of plants as you set. If they dont need other food small the artemia, it might work out raising.
The losses of what you have reported I have heard before by Jürgen Schmidt (Weisswasser).
I will ask him also for that.
I keep you informed,
thanks for the quick response.
Regards, chk

PS: Hopefully Germany will be as successful as your team had been on friday sending Brazil back overseas.

When they were this big and this beautifull they all died in a weeks time....a big mystery. If somebody can give me the reason, please do...

Chk, how is the male doing?

Hi Lydia,

I have never seen them as a tank bred school of youngsters before. Thanks for posting !!

Cheers,
Auke

Chk do you have youngsters yet?

Sadly, nope.
I could not check them regularly, due to job situation.
But you encourage me to hope that they will do it again.
... a ray of hope ....
Regards, chk

Fingers crossed!