The trick to hard water dwarfs.

[Kevin]

Just gathering data here but my assertion is that hard water dwarfs (Juli's, Shell Dwellers, Lamp's) seem to do their very best when given "excessive" amounts of space. By that, I mean that the behaviors needed to induce spawning takes the space of a standard 15 gallon tank but when placed in a 30 gallon tank they produce many more fry AND produce them more regularly. Any input :?:

Kevin

 

[Neil]

Kevin,
This is a very interesting subject. Although I am far less familiar with hard-water fish than you, I suspect that a lot of the issues here relate to conductivity, TDS or nitrates more than the actual size of the aquarium. If fish will spawn in a 15 gallon aquarium then there may be an issue of the conditions prohibiting more frequent or larger spawns. It seems apparent that it is a more difficult task to manage the chemistry of a smaller tank and, therefore, also apparent that waste products and nitrates build up at accelerated rate as well. I would be curious to know what the results would be from a comparison of those 2 tank sizes with identical water values.
Of course, this may well be academic because it wouldn't surprise me if fish from a large lake with respectively larger territories would just modify their breeding in relation to a smaller captive environment. Anyone else have any info? Because my thoughts are conjecture. :roll:

 

[jimmy]

I think i can answer that

Another factor could be that lake tanganyikan species tend to breed in colonies. So a pair might be raising several diffrent generations at one time. When the tank is too saturated with fry, or there are too many large fry without enough room and are jepordizing the youngest generations lives(cannibalism), the parents usually stop breeding all together until most or all of the fry have left the tank. So a smaller tank should work fine if you remove the fry regularly to a raising tank.

 

[Kevin]

The problems I have found with that is that in a 15 gallon aquarium a very dominant mle will pick off the fry unless you supply a million little hiding places. Simple species become impossible in a regular set-up with extremely dominant males. I see your point when dealing with fish of an average disposition but how do you allow the fry to escape the male in an intense situation in a small tank?