Colony breeding: The easiest way to breed livebearers for profit
You don’t need much to raise livebearers, such as platies, mollies and guppies. In fact, many hobbyists joke about how easy it is to add water to your tank. But what if you want to produce large numbers of fish to sell for profit at your local fish store or aquarium society? Also, what if your space and budget are tight? Can you afford large tanks or huge ponds such as the commercial farms? See how we have produced hundreds livebearers using a single fish aquarium with minimal effort.
1. Pick Your Starter Fish
Most people get fry because their pet fish “accidentally” bred and some of the babies survived. You should make sure that you have the best parents and the healthiest fish to provide the local market with high-quality products. Look for fish with the ideal colors, patterns, shape, and size. For any problems such as bent spines and missing fins or drooping ends, you can examine them from both the top view and side view. Finally, get a ratio of one male for every two to three females. The bare minimum you should start with is a trio of one male and two females, but you will be more successful if you can start your breeding tank with six, nine, or 12 adult fish instead. Higher quantities will not only increase the production of fry, but also reduce stress on the females to ensure they aren’t being harassed by the males.
For some species like Endler’s livebearers, the females aren’t as colorful as the males, but aim to have at least 2-3 females per male to produce greater numbers of fry.
2. Set Up the Breeding Tank
We will use a method called “colony-breeding”, where the babies are raised in the same aquarium as the adults. Yes, you can get higher numbers by raising the offspring in a separate aquarium, but that requires more tanks, more aquarium equipment, more space in your room, and more time spent feeding and cleaning tanks. Although this setup will produce less, it’s one of the best options if time is short or you don’t have enough money.
Remember that our goal is to build a money-making machine, not a gorgeous display tank. Adults will prey on their young, so we need to fill the aquarium with large amounts of algae, thickly grown plants, or even Easter grass. The tight spaces between the dense vegetation or material allow the young fish to escape but are too small for the adults to easily reach. They also allow females to hide away for a bit to get a quick break from the males. The goal is for the cover to be so dense that it is impossible to see the center of the mass. Our preferred type of cover is live aquarium plants because not only do they offer shelter, but they also look naturally beautiful and help purify the water by consuming toxic ammonia from your fish’s waste. Our favorite plants for breeding fish include water sprite, Pogostemon stellatus ‘octopus,’ and java moss. For more ideas, read our article on the top 10 aquarium plants for breeding fish.
Ideally the plants should not be too thick so that you cannot see through them.
The most popular livebearers available at the pet store often come from tropical climates, so you may need an aquarium heater if your room temperature is below their limits. In some cases, raising the temperature can increase metabolism, encourage more breeding, and speed up fry growth, but be careful not to heat the water so much that it shortens the fish’s life span. A filter is another useful piece of equipment to clean the water. We always use sponge filters in our breeding tanks because they have gentle flow, provide more oxygen to the water, and won’t suck up the babies. If you are using a hang-on-back or canister filter, make sure to cover the filter intake tube with a pre-filter sponge so fry won’t accidentally swim up into the motor.
Most livebearers live in harder, alkaline water, which is why many fish farms breed their livebearers in cheaper brackish water (a mixture of fresh tap water and ocean water) that has high pH and GH. But when customers take the fish home and put them in purely freshwater tanks, they end up going into osmotic shock and having massive health issues. To produce high-quality livebearers that are raised only in fresh water, we don’t recommend adding salt to your tank because then the fish will be harder to sell to local hobbyists and live plants won’t be able to survive in high salinity. However, if your tap water is very soft, we do recommend dosing mineral supplements like Wonder Shell or Seachem Equilibrium to prevent the fish from having problems with livebearer disease or the “shimmies.”
3. Do not overfeed the tank
You want small food that can be spread throughout the tank. This will ensure that fry don’t need to venture out of their comfort zone or become overwhelmed by adults at mealtimes. Our favorite foods for young livebearers include live baby brine shrimp, crushed flakes, freeze-dried tubifex worms, frozen mini bloodworms, daphnia, and Easy Fry and Small Fish Food. The key is to heavily feed the tank – preferably with multiple feedings throughout the day – to boost the breeding and fry growth rates. It also helps to keep the adults fuller, which reduces predation on offspring. We like program an automatic fish food feeder to go off several times a day while we’re at work, and then we personally feed the livebearers once in the morning and once at night to observe their condition.
An auto feeder helps to ensure your fish get fed and continue growing, even if you are too busy or forget.
Water quality problems can quickly arise if excess fish food is left to rot in the aquarium, so make sure to adjust the portion size as needed and keep up on your water changes. For smaller livebearers like guppies, we’ve had success keeping Neocaridina cherry shrimp as the clean-up crew. They not only pick up the leftovers but also provide live food for the livebearers. Plus, with all the hiding spots that you’ve provided the fish fry, some of the shrimp babies will survive and may become a second source of income that you can sell to your local fish store. You may prefer snails to shrimp. These wonderful scavengers can pick up extra crumbs.
4. Take Out What’s Not Necessary
As a conscientious breeder, you have a responsibility to not sell undesirable fish to your customers, especially if they can cause health issues down the road. Therefore, it is necessary to regularly cull or remove unsuitable fish from your breeding pool. Some of the offspring may have bent backs, missing fins, or other unwanted genetic traits that should not be passed onto the next generation. Culling should be repeated every few weeks as some defects may not become apparent until the fry turn a bit older. The ideal environment for raising fry is the breeding tank. Therefore, it is important to remove any culls before the fry reach sexual maturity. This can be very difficult for livebearers. This allows the healthy offspring to have the best survival chances and receive more food.
Culling fish can be a time-intensive process since you must carefully examine each fry for any defects.
There are many methods to breed livebearers, including catching the females out and placing them in their own tanks. But colony breeding is much easier, especially if your time, money and space are limited. Each strain of fish only takes one aquarium, so you can potentially enjoy multiple varieties of livebearers at the same time while still maintaining the integrity of their lines. To learn about more best practices, check out our library of articles on breeding fish.