How to Breed Goldfish Successfully

Breeding common goldfish is tricky, let alone fancy varieties.

Considering a 20-gallon tank is needed for keeping parent goldfish healthy, and as many as 10,000 eggs can be laid by any female at one time, you shouldn’t attempt to breed goldfish without adequate tank space.

Temperatures also need to be gradually adjusted to stimulate changing seasons during breeding, pre-spawning and spawning periods (look up fish breeding guides for the right temperature).

Quality Breeds

The quality of the offspring depends on the parents. Choose fish exhibiting qualities such as good fins, body size, shape and color. Healthy young fish from two to four years of age at four to six inches make good breeders.

Conditioning The Parents

Healthy strong parents spawn more readily and have a higher fertility rate.

For healthy, viable eggs in females and good milt in males, feed them heavily with nutritious well-balanced diets of high-protein food.

Add thick foliage, fine floating plants or sponge filters for a spawning site.

Mating Parents

You’ll know your goldfish are ready to spawn when their colors intensify.

Fish start grouping together, and a few males may single out and chase a partner vigorously through the water into plants.

When mating, the male pushes the female and both gyrate from side to side. The female expels her eggs for fertilization, and the eggs then stick to the plants or sponge filters where they remain till they hatch.

Spawning periods may take up to a few days. As goldfish have absolutely no parenting instincts, be sure you remove adults from the tank, or the eggs will get devoured.

Egg Development

The eggs resemble tiny transparent bubbles. Fertile ones are pale yellow, infertile ones opaque white. Remove infertile eggs immediately, as they get covered with fungus within a day.

Once eggs are fertilized, pigmented eyes, small spots and a beating heart take shape after two to three days. On the fifth to seventh day, larval fish with yolk sacs on their bellies burst our thereafter and cling to plants and the tank sides, resting most of the time.

A few days after, they break free for food. Coloring starts after a month or so.

Caring for Fry

Feed your fry nutritious foods four to six times daily for the first few weeks.

A solution of hard-boiled egg yolk with water makes an excellent first food, as do live foods such as daphnia and brine shrimp. You can also feed them commercial powdered fry food available from fish shops.

As fry are extremely delicate, water conditions should not undergo sudden changes. Ensure good and stable water conditions for survival.

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