| She may have been releasing but i would think that more likely she was just cruising, ive seen fish in my effluent pond face first having a feed in shallows.
i dont know that they gang up to spawn with other females just that in my case they were all ovulating as they were all triggered by the water and were totally ripe and ready to go the days or weeks before. id suggest they wouldve still all spawned even if twenty metres away spaced out in their own cage.
i could have fifty fish out of 55 that i could spawn tomorow night with my technique. no bull. im lucky to have the bore water that is good.
OR i could spawn batches of 8 to 12 females every two weeks for the next 10 weeks. then my season is over. i do it the second way as i will then have ponds ready as i go to take the fry and also i will get fish of different sizes for market and still have a new pond of 3 cm fish in 3 months from now for sale.
i only have ponds ready as i harvest them and at the moment i have many ponds with small fish growing up and no empties till next week which i will spawn in in a fortnight.
i actually sell mostly 3 cm fish so it makes sense to have them not spawn all at once and get too big or i have to underfeed them to keep em small but then they get skinny bodies and big heads.
im trying to sell out all my cullers but im finding only 20 fish worth keeping out of thousands.
i have sent you a pm on your other questions but i was in a hurry and didnt expain everythign very well.
i spawn my pairs in cages direct in the pond that the fry will grow.
it is new water, the pond has been emptied a week or more previoulsy and limed and filled a few days prior to spawning. someitmes i use fertiliser but there is often a good greening up just from the mud bottom and the organic load from the last crop.
last time i used a bag of chicken shit and a half bucket of urea and some DAP- phosphate and a hanful of potash.
i have used more organic stuff in previous times but was lazy this time round.
i rely pretty heavily on artificial feeds supplementing my live feeds but i find the first week is important to have some live stuff in there other than water and dust feed.
when i pair em up, i have lids on the cages to stop the broods escaping and i open the lid the morning after the first night and remove the egg laden matts and drop them in another cage to hatch. i use a wire hook on a rod, like a small gaff.
these spawning matt holdiong nets sit a metre or more away from the parent spawingin cage so they dont have time to dry out during air transfer.
then i put more new nett mesh for the next nights spawn in with the broods as often they will spawn for two nights in a row.
sometimes i will get zero eggs the second night and a really heavy spawn the first night. other times its even or other times its the second night thats the best. dunno why but it doent matter much.
i will pull out the second nights eggs the next morning leaving no eggs with the fish and then later i will remove the broods identify sex again and put them back in the brood pond net pens.
i have tried the techniwue of spawning in a tank but i find that the water gets dirty quick and that the temp is often cooler than the pond. this means i lose a day or more waitng for hatch.
it is generally more hassle for me, which i guess is part why i dont have the ability to target my best breeder outcomes and see what each pair gives me alone. i could just try one pair in the cage in the pond but im scared ill run out of fish for sale i spose if they dont produce a lot.
last time i did three females after my gin rin mistake and i have about 2/3 of th numbers i ussually get. these fish i use mostly are about 2 kilos each.
i have run water from a pump in the new pond into the tank and back out but ive found it is an uneccesary hassle as they do not harm each pother in the cages and its pretty easy to handle them in there and i can tell which pairs or groups spawn by the splashed water on the lids.
if you dont have access to a full pond worth of new fresh water then spawning in a tank would be the best option.
once you have eggs you can move them right into the blooming pond exactly like steve says.
in this instance you might like to run a pump into the tank to get the water the same temp etc. before moving eggs or you could hatch them out in the tank and release but it would be better quality water in the main pond i reckon, you can do the drop the old water out and fill with new and there is no real need to drop all of the tank out untill its dry.
id do the exchange so that the eggs dont get dry.
often eggs stick to the sides.
i have worried about losing eggs to fungus before but these days dont let it bother me.
these days i use more parents and dont worry about fungus so much but i suffer the ability to determine which parents produce which fish.
if i had two prize parents im sure id try save fungus attack more so.
if i know that the water will be particulalry warm over the next few days i can pull back on the numbers i breed or i will have too many fry hatch out as fungus attack is way less on warm days.
sometimes if i get the numbers worng like last time i did some goldfish i will have tooooo many fry and naturally osme of them die out which i dont like to see as i believ the pond ends up carrying less than it otherwise could if i dint get die back.
i have not entered the real pretty fish market yet, im in the dark ages with my spawning comapred to hi tech situations but i get the numbers just not quality colourings. |