Success with Micropoecilia picta :) (at least partially)

Success with Micropoecilia picta :) (at least partially)

Success in breeding livebearers has to be successfully rearing generation after generation of a species.

Challenges in breeding M.picta

The challenge in keeping and breeding M.picta seems to be to breed them past 3 generations. This they seem to have in common with certain other fish like the M.parae, but I must admit that I don't know anything about this 3.generation rule/hinder. And I haven't had mine long enough to comment further on this subject.

I have read that females are very weak after dropping fry and that if you want to keep them in order to get more fry from them, then they are best separated from the males and kept alone until they appear healthy enough to be re-introduced to the males again.

Supposedly avid fry eaters.

My experience

I bought 18 fish from two different petshops in Oslo in the first week of may 2019

after a month I had 11 fish left, 4males and 7 females, and I traded away 1 adult male, two adult females and 4 fry.

after another month in the beginning of july I had one adult male and 15 fry left from the original 18 adults.

As of 11.08.2019 I am left with 11 fry where the oldest one has coloured out as a male.

It does appear to be true that females are weak after dropping fry which is something that I will keep in mind with this lot. I will remove the males when the females look pregnant.

Hopefully this will prolong their lifespan*

* I am however also keeping in mind the fact that I don't know the age of the original group of fish that I had.

The females will readily dropp fry, and the fry are easy to raise. 

I have not seen them eat their own fry.

I keep my M.picta tanks at 28C with a filter and lots of plants. 

Supposedly they are also best kept..opposite of what is reccomended with other fish - less cleaning of the tanks and overfeeding being something to strive for rather than avoid in order to achieve success. 

I do let the tanks grow with algae, but wipe the front glass regularly in order to monitor the fish.

I have not been good with giving them more food than my other fish, I feed them once a day in the evenings, but they will graze algae off the glass.

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New arrivals !

So! I was at one of the petshops I often visit on my way home from work, and I hadn't been there for about a month because of vacation and works on the railtrack that made it harder for me to get there. In my absence they had stocked up on livebearers including M.picta!

I bought two pairs to add to my group at home, but so far I've kept them separate from my youngsters.

While I've been debating keeping two seperate groups going or adding the new fish to my existing group, they dropped fry :D