Who says there aren't riches in tropical fish?
The Diamond Tetra, Moenkhausia pitteri
By Jeff Michels
From Splash, newsletter of the Milwaukee Aquarium Society
Aquarticles
I’ve tried to spawn a several different Characins over the past year or so and not
with much success. In my attempts to propagate a tetra I’ve tried multiple methods,
anywhere from separating the adults before setting up a pair to spawn, using groups of
adults, soft water conditions, dark tanks, large and small aquariums, you name it. The
best I was ever able to do was to raise two fry from one batch to adulthood. Mind you the
adults I was attempting to spawn were Milwaukee tap water raised and removed from a
community tank were they had been "born."
The two cases were I managed to get fry from tetras were both accidental. I had lemon
tetra and ember tetra both spawn in conditioning tanks prior to being set up in a
"spawning" tank. Upon removing the adults and cleaning up the conditioning tank
I found, in one case, one baby, and in the other, two fry. Any attempts to find fry in the
spawning tanks resulted only in disappointment. This only goes to show how truly easy
tetras are to spawn. It’s hard to look at a tank of happy mature tetras and not find
a male courting a female or even spawning; it’s another thing to actually save the
eggs from being eaten by the adults and to then raise the fry.
After all of my extremely limited successes, I looked for some help and new ideas. Eric
Rogne had been submitting a lot of tetras into the BAP so I decided to seek his advice.
Eric said he used a ten gallon tank filled with straight reverse osmosis water, a sponge
filter, and plenty of Java moss and other spawning materials. After letting the tank sit
without fish for at least a week he stated that he added a group of conditioned tetras,
making sure to have females plumb with eggs and several males that had been showing bright
colors. Generally after 2-3 days Eric said he would see eggs in the Java moss if he looked
close enough and that was his trigger to remove the adults. Then it was a waiting game. It
would take the fry several days before they pushed their way out of the eggs and still
several days more before the fry would be ready to eat very fine powered food. Eric
indicated that this method would produce a number of fry.
I tried Eric’s method using some Diamond Tetra (Moenkhausia pitteri).
Things went according to plan, except the number of fry. At first I only had 3 or 4 tiny
silver slivers swimming near the surface and hanging around the sides of the tank, but the
next day I found 10 or 12. But then disaster struck, after about a week I could only find
5 fry and then quickly only 1. I assumed the powered food wasn’t enough for the
babies and that I would have to start all over. I let things sit for a few days and
waited, without feeding, to see what would happen.
When I finally took a close look at things again I found several babies, much larger
then I would have expected. Every time I got out the flashlight and looked for babies I
would fins a few more. I managed to find a total of 6, five larger ones and one little
guy. The bigger tetras were now eating baby brine shrimp after about two weeks of growth
and were putting on size fast. It was fun to squirt in some shrimp and come back in a few
minutes to look for these little gray slivers with huge orange bellies; it made counting
the babies a lot easier. The little runt could barely eat the baby shrimp and consequently
was not growing much. It didn’t take very long until one of its siblings made a meal
out of the little diamond tetra.
Now, after almost two months, the remaining five diamond tetra are almost a ½"
long and about 3/16" tall and look like tiny versions of their 1½" parents.
After all this fuss to raise five fish I can honestly say there is no money to be made in
cultivating diamonds in your home. Don’t raise tetras to get rich, just raise them to
see a sparkle and shimmer in your fish tank.
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