# want to breed feeders and rbp's



## juicepal (Feb 14, 2007)

i am a newbie to this board but not a newbie to the hobby. although i do not know much about breeding. first off i want to breed feeders for the rbp's that i will be breeding. right now i have a 5g, a 20g, a 29g, and a 125g. in my 20g i have 1, 4inch and 2, 5 inch saber tooths (hydrolycus armatus) that i will be selling. i was thinking about breeding some sort of feeder in the 20g then putting the fry in the 5g. what should i breed? i plan on using quite a few of these little guys. in my 125g which is already cycled







i want to put the rbp's to breed in. i have no clue how many i need and what sex, and i don't know how to tell which sex is which (with the pirahnas anyway). how large of specimens do i need? what sort of cover and temperature and all that? any help would be great! thank you.


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## nswhite (Mar 23, 2005)

juicepal said:


> i am a newbie to this board but not a newbie to the hobby. although i do not know much about breeding. first off i want to breed feeders for the rbp's that i will be breeding. right now i have a 5g, a 20g, a 29g, and a 125g. in my 20g i have 1, 4inch and 2, 5 inch saber tooths (hydrolycus armatus) that i will be selling. i was thinking about breeding some sort of feeder in the 20g then putting the fry in the 5g. what should i breed? *You can breed convict's they are pretty popular * i plan on using quite a few of these little guys. in my 125g which is already cycled
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## juicepal (Feb 14, 2007)

nswhite said:


> i am a newbie to this board but not a newbie to the hobby. although i do not know much about breeding. first off i want to breed feeders for the rbp's that i will be breeding. right now i have a 5g, a 20g, a 29g, and a 125g. in my 20g i have 1, 4inch and 2, 5 inch saber tooths (hydrolycus armatus) that i will be selling. i was thinking about breeding some sort of feeder in the 20g then putting the fry in the 5g. what should i breed? *You can breed convict's they are pretty popular * i plan on using quite a few of these little guys. in my 125g which is already cycled
> 
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[/quote]

thanks for the reply! one other thing..... should i buy the rbp's already at the 8 or 9" size or should i buy some smaller ones (maybe even just 1 inchers) and let them grow up? im leaning towards the smaller ones just because it will be more fun that way. im not in a big hurry or anything.


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## bootdink (Jan 17, 2007)

if you want a breeding pair it would be easier to buy/find an already matched up pair... buying them at 1" you will have no clue as to if they are a breeding pair till they are about 8 or 9"... which could take a ruffly 2 years(or more) to raise them from 1"- 9"...givin they have pristine conditions and good care!


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## BlackSunshine (Mar 28, 2006)

Well. you really don't have breeding facilitys setup with those small tanks. 
Convicts offer the highest yeild and quickest turn around on fry. however once the fry are free swimming it will be at least a month till they are of any size that is worth feeding to the RBP's. 
So your 5 gallon will not be enough to handle 1-300 fish. you would need a 50+ gallon just to grow all those buggers out. you might be able to get by in the 5 for a week. but then they would have to be moved up to a larger tank or they would start to eat each other. By the time the firstbatch was ready to use for feeding you would most likley have 2 more batches to deal with. And you can't mix them or the smaller batch will get eaten up.

A breeding pair of convicts is generally a male and female. They really aren't very picky.


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## nswhite (Mar 23, 2005)

If you want to watch the rbp grow than get the smaller ones they are much cheaper to.


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## Leasure1 (Jul 24, 2006)

always better to get several fish and raise them together if you are not going to buy a pair.


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