Breeding Project: Cherry Barb

It has been a week. A long, grueling week full of work and exhaustion, but finally! Tonight's the night things will finally commence.

I suspect that my filter for the 5 gallon hex wasn't fully cycled (which I don't blame from all the constant moving and whatnot), which caused havoc and death upon a number of my fish. One of these fish unfortunately happened to my male Cherry Barb. So on Tuesday I made that daunting voyage to PetsMart to pick up a lone male. As luck would have it, I much like this male a lot more than the previous male. He may not be as large as the other male, but patterning and coloring are a lot better than the last one.

Two subsequent visits to the 5 gallon breeder in a bag happened on Tuesday and Thursday. Hopefully the enticing worked, though both the male and the female seemed to be very receptive on both occasions. A feeding of bloodworms occurred throughout the week as was water changes every couple of days (though I took some out daily anyway).

Yesterday, I took out all the java moss, the four Cherry Shrimp, and lone male Ram and gave the tank a good scrubbing to remove all the algae. Playing around with my various filters, I made the tank seem like it was new all over again without removing any of the water. I also did a 50% water change and squeezed out the sponge filter (to help out a new aquarist), hopefully there's still bacteria on the sponge media. Today, I added in the marbles. 325 marbles later the breeding tank is primed for function. I added 5 large marbles in for fun. :)

Tonight, before I go to bed, I will place the male and female together. This should give them some time to cozy up together before the first light of tomorrow. The female, while looking as though she's holding eggs, is not as plump as I'd like her to be. Regardless, I'm sure she still has a good set of eggs on her and hope everything goes smoothly.