Breeding Your Serpae Tetra
For starters, you need to pick your serpae tetra breeding pair – now this may not be as easy as it appears for the simple reason that both the males and the females pretty much look the same. However, males are usually more slim and smaller than females. There is also a visible difference between the shape of the swim bladder, which can be seen above & behind the silverish abdominal cavity.
Serpaes spawn equally well in groups. To select your breeding pair(s), you should ideally condition them with live foods in separate tanks. When the females are noticeably full of eggs and the males are displaying their best colours, select the fattest female and best-coloured male and transfer them to the spawning tank in the evening. They should spawn the following morning.
Setting up your breeding tank – even a small one (3 to 5 gallons) usually works as long as it is planted with thick bunches of fine leaved plants such as Myriophyllum for them to lay their eggs on – else, spawning mops or Cabomba or Java moss works. You could also throw in some floating plants to dim the lights. Use a dark substrate.
Check the water quality regularly and make sure the water is soft and acidic with a pH between 5.5 and 7 and a temperature should in the mid 70s to mid 80s F.
Serpae tetra eggs are tiny and translucent and will be strewn among the fine leafed plants. As soon as the eggs have been fertilized, you should remove the adult fish from the breeding aquarium else they might eat them. Fry typically hatch within 24-36 hours, and you can feed them small food, e.g. infusioria, young brine shrimp and egg yolk. They typically become free swimming about about 3 – 4 days, and as they grow bigger, you can feed them microworm or powdered flake food.
In the early stages, the eggs and fry are light sensitive, so the tank should ideally be kept in darkness.
Here’s a video of them spawning:
Must reads:
Serpae Tetra – Red Minor Tetra or Jewel Tetra
