article: Fish and Breeding

Fish and Breeding

Fish consist of two different types of breeding type, egg layers, and live bearers. Most all fish that are kept in the water garden where the ponds are kept at a consistent temperature are egg layers. Fish will lay their eggs in various places; some keeping them very near or on their body and others, the eggs are so small you might not realize that the eggs are really there. There are unusual fish that will produce both livebearers and that will lay eggs, but these are fish that are very rare. With in the egg laying fish categories, there are fish that will have their eggs fertilized internally by the male, there are eggs that are laid, and then the male will fertilize the fish.

How are you going to determine the sex of your fish? There are various ways to determine which fish is a male out of a batch of fish, sometimes this is done only by looking at the color, the size, the fins, or the sizes of the chest of the fish. Guppies are one fish that will produce livebearers and eggs in the water garden. The Saraso Goldfish is a fish that will keep the eggs, the tubercles on their bodies until they are ready to hatch, and the Medkas are a fish that will lay eggs that will be fertilized either in the fish or after they are laid, depending on the environment. When discussing Goldfish or Koi, it is very difficult to determine which fish are which sexes because their sizes and their shapes are similar, but males will have a slimmer looking chest than that of the female of these species.

Commercial fish farmers are able to control when their fish are going to spawn by injecting fish with pituitary gland extracts and at other times of the year the breeders will have to rely on the season, the temperature for the fish to start breeding or their spawning times. For the water garden owner, you are going to have to rely on the seasons for your fish to begin laying eggs, there is very little you can do to start the process on your own. For every fish that is going to lay eggs to reproduce, you can expect at minimum several hundred eggs to several thousand eggs per fish. For many in the Goldfish category, they will lay up to 100,000 eggs, which weighs over two pounds so that there are going to be Goldfish that survive the predators associated with Goldfish eggs.

When you see your fish eggs along the edges of your water garden, there is going to be no mistaking that these are fish eggs because they are most often bunched together. These eggs are contained by a slimy clear liquid surrounding and hold the eggs together protecting them from dangers and temperature changes. This is something that you will not see at any other time of the year. Generally spring is the season when fish are going to start laying their eggs, and for some, this spawning time can be any where up to the mid summer months.

For fish that are going to carry their eggs, the tubercles, sometimes these are carried by the male and in other fish by the female. The eggs are going to appear to be like little pimples, little white or small clear sacs that are attached to the body and generally this is going to be near the head or near the fin areas so the fish can best protect their eggs. In cases with the Goldfish, the males will continually seem to be nudging the female Goldfish during spawning seasons. During spawning season the colors of the male fish often will look brighter and they will seem to be a bit more hyper during this time, swimming faster, more often and sometimes in circles.