Hey! I need some fast info! My paradise fish are spawning as I type this. I need to know about fry care, hatch time, etc. This is my first spawn with them!

Breeding of the paradise fish is quite simple. Nothing much is needed to get them to spawn. They should be fed more than usual and given baby fish and other good foods in preparation to spawn. Put in the male on day one, and the female in on day two. Be sure the female is ready. She should be slightly plump from above. They will build a bubble nest and spawn in it. and the male will guard the eggs. Remove the female at this point. The male will tend the young for 3 days, after that remove him, lest his taste buds overcome his parenting skills! The young thrive on infusoria mixtures and yeast suspensions and grow slowly. Then when they reach the age that they may eat brine shrimp, growth kicks high gear. My paradise fish young accepted frozen baby brine shrimp. They will grow to 1/2 of an inch in about 2-3 months, and will get about 1 inch in six months.

Your welcome to borrow the tank. Give me a call tonight if you'd like and we'll set something up for the tank

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I have a paradise fish spawn!!! For those of you who don't know, paradise fish are cousins to bettas and gouramis. About a month ago, I bought a male paradise fish. He's living in my 30 gallon long SE Asian tank. About 2 weeks ago, I found him a woman. lol I've been feeding the fish in there (3 golden wonder killifish, female bettas, and a SAE) Hikari Betta Bio-Gold pellets, live food (the occassional cricket and may fly and deformed guppy fry), and frozen foods (bloodworms, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp). Keep in mind that I just got this tank over ich, which has led me to save my cash for a quarantine tank (lesson learned there). This past Sunday, I noticed that the male paradise fish had started building a pretty good sized bubble nest in the V. spiralis that has grown too tall for my tank. Well, over the course of a few days, he's built a HUGE nest. I've been busy today and hadn't paid much attention to the tank besides making sure everyone is fed. Well, late this evening what did I see? The male and female under the nest. The female was watching the male. I was distracted by my daughter, so I turned away. When I looked back, they were embracing! I watched them for who knows how long, and I made a few mental notes of how they spawn. I noticed that the paradise fish isn't as violent as bettas are during spawning, and the female helps out alot. The male will embrace the female from underneath and during the squeezing he will flip her over so that the eggs will FLOAT up towards the nest. The male and the female can become unconcious, but not as long as I have noticed with bettas. Both the female and the male paradise will tend the nest. The female will chase away any intruder or perverted peeping tom from the nest while the male tends it. The embracing that I observed went on for a few hours, ending with the male chasing her away. So, there are many eggs in the nest! I am so freakin' excited! I just need to get the brine shrimp hatchery going tomorrow! (Well, really later this morning.) I am also going to have to move the killifish to another tank because they are notorious egg and baby fish eaters. I may even have to move out the female bettas.

when i bred mine i had them in a seperate 10 gallon only half filled full of plants. i didn't run anykind of filtration as it would break the bubble nest. don't worry them gouramis live in some hard conditions in the wild and should be able to handle it. when i first saw the eggs i carefully took the female out first, i then left the male in there another day as he is responsible for helping the eggs tumble ect. then i took him out. the eggs should hatch within a few days. after that you can either get a turkey baster and suck them all up carefully and put in another tank so you can spawn another pair again or just leave them in there. the fry IMO are pretty hard to raise, they feed off of infusoria for the first couple weeks till they can start eating finely crushed up flakes or BBS. also note as they grow, one may grow faster then the rest and start picking off the smaller ones. I've observed that the males of the paradise species act towards each other in small quarters as bettas would, they just don't like each other.

also this link may give you some tips also.

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and theres another link on there about infusoria and taking care of gourami fry.

Dragon, I had come across that page when I was doing research on them a few weeks ago--after I bought the male and started looking for a female. What threw me off about the females was that the one female I did find has extensions on her caudal. I had thought that maybe she was a young male, especially because when I brought her home, the male that I already had was chasing her around, and I thought it was aggression. Well, obviously, I know that she is a female. So, we'll see if I get some nicer finnage out of this spawn--if I can raise them to adulthood.

ya she would definately be an awesome female if she has that, my females didn't have as much as my male did.

If I had a camera worth a ____, I'd post some pics of her. She also has great coloring.

So how are they doing for you so far? Seperating the eggs and such is by far new to me that way

use the fone annaricebowl
hey congrats on the spawning hope you are able to raise the fry, i have heard about not using a fillter in the spawning tank as it can disturb, the bubble nest, remember they are labyrinth fish, which basicaly mean that they are equiped with an additional respiratory organ, which enables them to survive in shallow,oxygen starved water. do you also know they are capable of walking on their pectoral finns to serch out new water

Well, I tried. Here she is, I hope you can see her caudal extensions:



Here's the nest as of a few minutes ago (top view). The eggs are nice and neat in the nest (darker mass, a little yellow compared to the surrounding bubbles):

Not to bad. Hopefully everything will go smoothly from here on out