Herd spawning

[keegster803]

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone has heard of herd spawning in livebearers?


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[Mattyfelts]

no i dont think they do. its just one on one real quick

 

[keegster803]

Oh, I didn't mean mass spawning, it's a different term


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[Andy Sager]

I highly doubt that it's possible to do that with livebearers. What I understand of herd spawning is done with egglayers, by multiple males congregating around a single female that is ready to spawn. With livebearers, insertion has to happen and as been noted in an article about Guppies I believe, impregnation does not always happen at each insertion. So while multiple males may successfully penetrate the female, there is no guarantee that they have successfully fertilized her eggs. With egglayers, mass clouds of milt will cover the eggs and it's anyone's guess who the father really is.

Hope this helps

 

[taernster]

I don't think its possible with live bearers

 

[Coursair]

Plus too many males to one female Livebearer can cause undue stress and can kill the female from constant harassment.


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[keegster803]

Herd spawning, the one I'm talking about is where, you have the proper ratios at first, then when the females have their fry you let the fry stay in their, and after a couple generations, all the fish will be all different sizes and fry predation vanishes.


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[Andy Sager]

Herd spawning, the one I'm talking about is where, you have the proper ratios at first, then when the females have their fry you let the fry stay in their, and after a couple generations, all the fish will be all different sizes and fry predation vanishes.


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The problem I see with doing this with tropical fish is that after enough generations of the fish through inbreeding, you can, and usually do, lose traits that are not natural to the fish and they revert back to wild attributes. As for fry predation vanishing, I think this will all depend on the fish you are talking about. Certain livebearers, (ie Gambusia species) are fry eaters by nature. You will probably never really get them not to ( without external intervention) no matter how many generations you have in there.

Just my thoughts on the subject

I did, however, do some research and saw herd breeding was done creating new species of bass (ie. striper/ white bass hybrid) but again, these are egglayers. What it sounds like you are referring to is akin to line breeding which the info I mentioned above applies.

Hope this helps