Birds and bees and fish

[Shdwdrgn]

Has anyone ever figured out what really sets off the spawning? My wife says that many of her aquarium fish are set off by water changes because the cool water is similar to Spring rains. All of my fish have been getting fat with eggs, but so far I've only seen one day where they were really actively spawning, and that was well over a month ago.

This morning I woke up to find *everybody* was chasing around the pond. We've had warm weather and cool weather, nothing atypical, however the one difference is that last night I ran a really long cycle on my sprinklers which added about 1/2 inch of cold water to the pond. Could it really be that simple to trigger the spawning? Note that where I live, we get very little rain... last year we got less than 8 inches for the entire year, so running the sprinklers is the closest the fish ever see to rain.

At least they seem to be interested in my spawning mops! I couldn't find any cheap yarn mops, so I picked up a couple shades of green and white yarn and made my own mops. They've been in the pond for several weeks, but I saw a few pairs pushing up against the mops this morning. Tonight after work I'll have to pull out the mops and see if I have anything...

 

[Mmathis]

I think it has to do with a progressive warming of the water.

 

[mrsclem]

Someone posted that they will spawn during a full moon. Also, a water change is supposed to help. Worked for me last month, I put a basket with plant material in and found eggs the next morning. Moved to a separate tank and checked it for 2 weeks- no fry. Went to drain it this week and there are baby koi swimming around. Think I will put mops out today.

 

[HTH]

Agreed on the full moon thing and water change. Some people condition for spawning with additional protein if I recall correctly.

If nothing else put them in bags and drive them around town for a while. Seems they often spawn after shipping. My guess this has to do with water quality. It declines in the bag and when the fish is returned to better water it spawns. I had fish in a drip system for a few years. I do not know if it was because of the consistent water quality but they seldom spawned.

 

[mrsclem]

Well I put mops out last night and we got rain to go with the full moon. This morning I have a major spawn going on in my ginrin pond. YAH!! They spawned 2 months ago and the fry stayed in the pond but have since disappeared. Got eggs from the other pond last month during the full moon and moved the eggs to a holding tank. Now I have to set up another tank for ginrin fry.