My first experience of breading fish was about three years ago when one of my platies had babies, it was a big unexpected surprise as I had never contemplated that my fish would actually breed. It was a Saturday morning whilst I was sitting having coffee that I notices these tiny things dashing across the water in the tank. I went over to have a look to find what seamed to be about twenty tiny fish racing around. I went into a state of panic as I notice one of the other fish chase then and then eat a few. I quickly went into the kitchen to find a container and my scooping net. I filled the container with tank water and then I started to try and scoop the baby fish out, this was a challenge as they were fast. I finally manager to catch around 10 of them. I then decided to look at my filter system and found another 5 in there.
I then raced down to the pet shop to see what equipment I needed and the store owner told me that a fish breeding box like the one below was what I required to keep the fish safe from the other fish.My next concern was what to feed them, the pet shop owner said that crushed fish food was fine and when they got a bit older some blood worm would be good as well. Oh at this stage I found out the correct name for the babies were "fry".
Weeks went past and the fry grew nicely and I eventually placed them back with the larger fish. Just in case your reading this and want to know when they can be migrated back in with the rest of the fish, well its when the fry are big enough that they can no longer fit in the biggest fish's mouth!
Other fish that have live "fry" are
Mollies , Swordtails, Guppies, Convicts