Re: Breeding SAE's ?

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Breeding SAE's ?
From: Liisa Sarakontu <lsarakon at hila_hut.fi>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 19:51:00 +0300 (EET DST)
In-Reply-To: <199609081939.PAA21928 at looney_actwin.com>

> Subject: Breeding SAE's ?
> 
> it's this group.  I got 8 SAEs several weeks ago when they were about .75" in
> size.  They did their job on the hair & green algae and rapidly grew to about
> 1.75 to 2".  Now 1 of them has developed a  rounded belly (no its not
> constipated) and is staking out a territory.  It's been doing a "dance" with
> a few of the other fish (the two of them swimming head to tail in circles for
> 30 to 90 secs at a time) and then they go off into the marked out territory.

Lil,
it is possible to breed them in a good home aquarium (I have just received
Doug Underwood's excellent raport about this!), but your fish seem to bee
a little too small to try to do it.  They should be about 3-4" to be 
serious, so I guess that the fat one is just the top guy of that school,
and gets the most food.  I'm not sure about that "territory" stuff.  I  
don't think that they stake out territories for breeding, and they have
no parental instincts - they are egg scatterers, like other barbs, and
love to eat their own eggs (as Doug told in his raport).  That dancing
is very common SAE behaviour, and it doesn't always mean that they try to
breed.

Liisa Sarakontu                     INTERNET:    lsarakon at hila_hut.fi
Helsinki University of Technology   WWW homepage http://www.hut.fi/~lsarakon/