Tropical Aquarium Fish

Trichogaster has a more prolonged than high body. It has a small mouth in the superior part of the body. The male has more marked lips. It can reach 15 cm in aquariums, but in nature it is much bigger. Trichogasters have 2 varieties of body coloration:
- carroty-violet
- shining blue
The male has a longer and sharper dorsal fin, while the female`s is short and round. Another difference of the female is that after she becomes mature, her abdominal area is very turgid. The blue shining variety received the name: Trichogaster trichopterus sumatranus. They are spread all over India.

For reproduction Trichogaster trichopterus needs a temperature of 25-27° C, and for normal care they only need 22-24° C. The chemistry of water doesn`t have much importance. The reproduction aquarium must be about 30-40 liters and the water level can be 20-25 cm. On the surface of the aquarium water you`ll add some floating plants like: Riccia fluitans or Ceratopteris species. These plants serve as a hiding place for the female and they are also a good support for the bubble nest, which is constructed by the male using a mouth secretion. The female should be introduced in the evening, and the male next morning. After a few minutes of accommodations the male will alternate the female chase with the bubble nest construction. The bubble nest made by the male can sometimes be very big, about half of the aquarium, or it can be small, it can even be absent. The eggs are very oleos so they don`t fall down from the bubble nest; they are under the strict supervision of the male. Immediately after they spawn, the female must be taken out of the reproduction aquarium because the male will hurt her in order to send her away from the nest. In order to take out the female, from an aquarium where hundreds or even thousands of fry swim, you`ll need nylon netting. You need a netting like that not to catch the eggs (when you remove the female) or the fry (when you remove the male). The fry hatches after about 24-30 hours and for the next 3-4 days it remains in the nest. After the offspring swims free, you`ll remove the male and start feeding the baby fish. We can administrate them infusors or yolk of an egg. If we feed them with yolk, this has to be administrated 3-4- times a day and in small quantities. At this point we`ll add a filter with few bubbles because the fry is very sensitive to water movement. In the first days, there are a lot of fish and we`ll have to feed them well, the quantity of food should be correlated with the number of fish. If we don`t feed them well, tome of them will grow and eat the little ones, the number of fish can increase dramatically after a week or two. If we feed them well, they`ll grow nicely and after 3-4 days we can administrate Artemia (baby brine shrimp). For 1-2 days we`ll keep feeding them with infusors or yolk of egg in order to help the fry which remain small.

The aquarium must be covered with a glass plaque, especially between the 3rd and 5th weeks when they develop their labyrinth, any difference between the air temperature and aquarium water temperature will induce their death. If we feed the fry with Artemia or micro worms, we`ll have less trouble because these `animals` don`t multiply much and they don`t dirty the water as the yolk does. Starting with the 5th feeding day, we`ll add fresh water, at the same temperature, in order to full the aquarium. After 3-4 weeks the fry will start looking like their parents. If they developed differently, we`ll have to permanently select them. The reproduction way is similar to the species of Colisa and Trichogaster leeri.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Anabantoids aquarium fish, Uncategorized aquarium fish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.