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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Aug 17th 2007
1:59 AM
How do you breed goldfish in a 4 litre aquarium!
Mar 8th 2009
12:00 PM
heres a question
do you need to have that much water to have them actually breed ?
can i succesfully breed mine in a 21 litre tank?
Apr 9th 2009
6:45 AM
how to bread gold fish in a small aquarium about 20 litres
Apr 10th 2009
10:34 PM
Im ready to breed goldfish how do you tell the difference if there pregnant or male and female?
Apr 10th 2009
10:35 PM
how do you tell the difference if your goldfish is male female or pregnant?
Apr 19th 2009
1:22 PM
how can I start fish breeding like gold fish, goffi,shordtail and molifish?
Jun 7th 2009
6:22 PM
u can tell what sex they are by looking down from the top of your tank.
the female is fat on 1 side but slimer on the other and male is the same size on both sides.
u can tell if their pregnant after a couple of weeks of they get quite fat but make sure u havent over fed them or that will be why their fat
Jun 8th 2009
8:55 PM
Fish don’t get pregnant. They lay eggs, which are fertilized by the male in the water. This is not pregnancy.
Sep 5th 2009
2:13 PM
how can i remove gold fish egg from aquarium to move the other site. in other word i am looking for substance that act as anti-adhisive for egg
Sep 7th 2009
12:36 PM
i have a 5 gallion tank. i have fancy tall golde fish i have 3 of them and i dont know if i have a male. HELP
Sep 22nd 2009
3:45 PM
I have slowly warmed the water with them in it temp is 79~80f, how long do it takes for them to lay eggs? and how long can i keep them at this temp? both fist are 2yold 3~4inch commet goldfish, i may have 2males or 2females im not sure. its been 3~4hr so far.
Oct 3rd 2009
4:19 PM
Ok i get but do i take the goldfishes that i had ggs out of the water or i let them in there?
Oct 31st 2009
4:38 AM
plzz u can tell me how will u knw female is pregnant gold fish reply soon as possible….
Nov 23rd 2009
1:50 AM
Ur crazy, goldfish need massive tanks if u wanna breed them, i have a 20 litre aquarium, but you need at least 100 litres for healthy fry.
I got a 220 litre aquarium to breed comet goldfish. u need a sand filter or loads of plants, and possibly live plants.
Commons like comets ( I have ) should be put in 70 litres of water for any size, but fancy like fantails need about 40 litres each.
when males are ready to breed, they will have small pimples on their gill cover known as tubercules, while the female be wonky to 1 side.
if you want to see if your goldfish is about to lay eggs, feed her mashed up frozen peas, the skin taken off.
They should do poo soon, but if not for a very long time, they are constipated.
it is impossible to breed goldfish in a 5 litre aquarium, and also very hard in a tank.
If you are breeding go0ldfish, you need a 20 – 50 litre aquarium for the fry, while eggs you need to put them in a tank with no weight at all, as they will be crushed, and will not hatch.
Good luck with your fish!