Summer Tubbin'

It's getting warmer around the US and Europe which means pond season for the lucky few of us, but it's also something special for the serious hobbyist: a chance to expand your fishroom. I'm not talking about an extension on the house; I'm talking about your back porch. In most of the US and Europe, there are at least a couple of months of weather warm enough to house most of our aquarium fish outside.

Hobbyists take advantage of this warm summer weather to spawn and grow fish outside. Some accidentally discover that fish spawn like this while others, often going on the words of those with the happy accident, purposefully put fish outside to spawn. Most people believe the trick to getting the fish to spawn is how closely this replicates their natural environment. The floating plants, the live food, the cooling rain are all things the fish would naturally experience and have evolved to live with. People have had success spawning all kinds of fish from livebearers to egg-scatteres like barbs and tetra. Gourami are another favorite fish to spawn in these tubs.

Tubs used for breeding by renowned hobbyist Rachel O'Leary (msjinxkd.com)

Placement of the tub does matter. You can't put them in full sun all day long as this will heat up the water too much. Ideally you want about 4-5 hours of morning sun. This means  placing them on the eastern side of your house or yard. The tub (or tubs) should not be under cover or eaves of your house because the rain is important to them. Rain cools the water in the heat of summer and provides mother nature's water changes.

Most any tub that holds more than 20 gallons of water will due. Animal watering troughs are a favorite because they are large, built to hold water, and the plastic won't degrade under the UV rays of the sun. You might have to modify the tub a bit. If you don't like the idea of tubs overflowing when you get a lot of rain in a short time, then think about drilling overflow holes. These drain the tub when it reaches a certain water level and prevent the tub from overflowing and sending your plants and fish overboard.

Water trough made into a pond (azcopperpenny @ Photobucket)

An optional piece of equipment is a pump.  Some people like the calming noise of water moving, and some people just like to have some water movement in the tub to keep it a uniform temperature. Something like this would be less important if you were raising gourami or betta spawns.

When setting up these summer tub ponds, you are really at the mercy of mother nature. This often means being familiar with the weather patterns in your area: what time of year it really begins to warm; what time of year you see cooling off; just how much rain you get in the summer. When you see daytime temperatures steadily in the 70's (~ 21C) is when you should begin setup. Just as with a tank, start with the plants first. Fill the tub with a mixture of dechlorinated tap water and water from the tank that you will be bringing the fish. This gives the plants some nutrients to consume before you add the fish. Let the plants get settled for about a week. Then you add the fish. Don't just dump them in; acclimate them like you would any fish. You may also want to place some mesh netting over your tub pond because fish have a tendency to jump in the first few days.

Frogs in the pond are cute, but can eat fry (tomylees @Flickr)

Plants are a big aspect of these summer tub ponds. They are part filtration system, part cooling system, and part fry nursery. The best kind to have are floating plants like water lettuce, frogbit, water hyacinth, and duckweed. These all have roots that hang down and allow fry a good place to hide. Egg-scatterers can attach their eggs to these roots; bubble nesters can attach their nests to the undersides of leaves. If you are looking for some lovely blossoms, lotus plants do well in these setups, too. Marginal plants like iris, cattails, and rushes can be used to add some aesthetic appeal and make the tub really look like a pond. Just like with fish tanks, patience is key!

This summer, I've decided to try out these summer tubs. I have a lot of floating pond plants because they grow so well in the pond, and I have an old plastic tub that I used to haul around pond plants in. The only thing I would need is the fish. As much as I'd love to try breeding my gourami in a tub this summer, I don't want something to go wrong on my first try and accidentally kill them. So I'm going to use the livebearers from my pond, mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki. When the summer is up I will just put the remaining mosquitofish back into my pond. Next summer I will be spawning my gourami. Wish me luck!!

My tub pond! Grow, baby, grow!!!

Works Referenced

Colleti, Tim, Dr. 2011. "Summer Tubbin': Breeding you Fish Outdoors."  Tropical Fish Hobbyist (June) 86 - 89.

Sipes, John. 2003. "Summer Tubbin'." www.aquarticles.com. Retrieved: 28 April 2013.

Marchio, Liz. 2008. "Urban Pond Tubbin' Water Gardens". AquaScaping World  (June): 8 - 11. 

Is my fish a girl or a boy?

How to determine the sex of your fish

Most people like to name their fish and want to have a name that fits the fish’s gender. Other people want to try breeding and need to know if they have males and females. Sexing fish can be a tricky thing, but there are some species and families of fish that are relatively easy. Before we get into those, I’ll talk about some general trends in sexing fish.

Females are rounder

Of course this only works with mature animals, but for the most part the female will have slightly thicker bodies. This is because the eggs that females carry take up more space than sperm. The females also need larger fat reserves to produce the eggs.

Males are smaller and more colorful

Just as in birds, males are the more colorful of the genders. Males compete with other males by showing off their vibrant colors. The most colorful male gets to mate. They are also slightly smaller than the females.

Sexing popular fish

Goldfish (Carassius auratus auratus)

These fish can actually be a little tricky as they have no obvious differences when the fish are not breeding, but there are two things you can look for when they breed: breeding stars and the shape of the vent.

Breeding stars or breeding tubercules will only appear on the males. They appear on the gill plate and pectoral fins. These are a sign of virility, and a study performed on a relative of the goldfish found a correlation between the number of breeding stars and how healthy a male fish is. These stars help a female fish decide who she wants to mate with.

Breeding stars on pectoral fin and gill cover (goldy fk @ flickr)

The next thing to look for is the shape of the vent (this is also called the cloaca and is the opening near the anal fin). The vent of the male will be slightly larger and concave (meaning it curves inward). The vent of the female will be smaller and protrude slightly. The pictures below better illustrate this.

Circled male vent (mikroll @ TheGAB)

Circled female vent (mikroll @ TheGAB.org)

I find using the vent method to be a little difficult as my goldfish usually like to have their heads facing towards me begging for food. I prefer to use the breeding star method because they are more visible in my experience.

Betta fish (Betta splendens)

These small, popular tropical fish are a little easier than goldfish to sex because some of it can be done out of the breeding season. There are two main ways to sex bettas: fin length and the presence of an ovipositor.

If you see a long-finned betta it is a male. There have been cases where females have longer than normal fins, but they aren’t nearly as long as the typical halfmoon spread seen below.

These extremely long fins indicate a male(Aquariumloto @ Flickr)

Sexing bettas gets a little trickier when you are dealing with plakat (or short-finned) bettas because the male and female fins are the same length. Now you have to look for the ovipositor on the female. The ovipositor is a small white tube protruding from the vent of the female; in breeding she uses this to position eggs. It will appear as a small white dot behind the ventral fins. The lack of such indicates a male.

Arrow points to ovipositor (Stuart Halliday)

Angelfish (Pterophyllum spp)

Another extremely popular aquarium fish, but much harder than bettas or goldfish to sex. They have no discernible differences when they are not spawning, and when they are spawning you have to look very closely to see the only difference:  the males will have a thinner breeding tube which is visible in the vent of the fish. Both males and females have breeding tubes, so the key is to look for the smaller one.

Female angelfish breeding tube (koiangelfish.com)

Male angelfish breeding tube (koiangelfish.com)

Neon tetra (Paracheirodon innesi)

Like angelfish, neon tetra are difficult to sex. The only difference will be in size. The females will be slightly larger and fatter especially when they are ready to breed. Males may show slightly better color, but these differences are so minute that they will likely go unnoticed.

Livebearers (Poecilidae)

These are fish like guppies, platies, swordtails, and mollies. The males and females are very easy to tell apart. There is a large size difference with some females being almost one and a half times the size of the males. The males will have long, flowing fins and are very colorful. Males also possess a modified anal fin called a gonopodium; this is used to transfer sperm to the females. Below you can see two illustrations showing the differences between male and female guppies

General female livebearer characteristics (jabraguppyroom.blogspot.com)

General male livebearer characteristics (jabraguppyroom.blogspot.com)

Cory catfish (Corydoras spp)

Another popular but difficult fish to sex, cories have no highly visible differences between the genders. Females will tend to be the larger ones and look much chubbier when they are breeding, but for the most part males and females look exactly alike.

Bristlenose pleco (Ancistrus spp)

These small plecos are surprisingly easy to sex. Both males and females will have the bristly nose, but the number and size of the bristles will be much greater in the males. This is especially true when the fish are in breeding condition. Scientists believe that males evolved the bristles to mimic young fish because females are more likely to mate with a male who is already caring for eggs.

Male bristlenose with month old offspring (goldy fk @ Flickr)

Oscar (Astronotus ocellatus)

Probably the most popular of the cichlids next to angelfish, but even more difficult to sex. Among wild populations the males show more color than females, but this isn’t reliable with the captive-bred fish that show up in stores nowadays because they have been bred for color.

Cherry barb (Puntius titteya)

This is a species that is easy to sex based on the general trends in fish genders. The males are smaller and have more red color and the females are larger and will be more brown in color. This holds true with wild-caught and naturally bred cherry barbs. There are some that have been specifically bred to make the red even brighter; these are much more difficult to gender. 

Female cherry barb on left, male on right (aquapage.cz)

Gourami

They aren’t as easy to sex as livebearers, but they are pretty easy if you know what to look for. If it’s not a captive-bred variant, the males will be a brighter color especially when breeding. If they are a color variant you have to look for a few other things. For the Trichogaster gourami (this is dwarf, honey, thicklips, and banded) look at the end of the dorsal fin; males will have a pointed dorsal, and females will have a rounded dorsal. These pictures below illustrate this as it can be hard to pick out if you’ve never seen it.

Male honey gourami (CK Yeo @ Flickr)

Female honey gourami (CK Yeo @ Flickr)

For the Trichopodus gourami (opaline, three-spot, blue, gold, pearl, and moonlight) you also look at the dorsal fin. The males will have a longer dorsal fin. Males of the pearl and moonlight species will show more red color than the females.

Pearl gourami. Male above, female below (seriouslyfish.com)

With some of our aquarium fish it can be very easy to tell the males from the females, but others can give you a lot of trouble. Some like oscars and angelfish can even give breeders trouble in determining gender. If you wish to breed any of these fish, I highly suggest you do a lot of research and read personal experiences. While breeding can be fun and rewarding, it can also be costly and heartbreaking when done incorrectly.

Works referenced

Christie F. 2006. Sexing Bettas: The Ovipositor. nippyfish.net. Retrieved: 31 Jan 2013

How to tell Male and Female Guppy Apart. Jabraguppyroom.blogspot.com. Updated: 29 July 2011. Retrieved: 1 Feb 2013.

Kortet R., J. Taskinen, A. Vainikka, and H. Ylonen. 2004. Breeding Tubercles, Papillomatosis and Dominance Behavior of Male Roach (Rutilus rutilus) During the Spawning Period. Ethology 110:591-601.

Seriously Fish

Sexing Angelfish. Koiangelfish.com. Updated: 2013. Retrieved: 1 Feb 2013. 

Sexing Goldfish. Bristol-aquarists.org.uk. Updated: 26 October 2012. Retrieved: 31 Jan 2013

Sexing Goldfish. theGAB.org. Updated: 16 Aug 2009. Retrieved: 31 Jan 2013

Fish and Thunderstorms

Storms have an effect on our fishy friends (Kevin Rank @ flickr)

Ever wondered why your fish always seem to be more active right before a thunderstorm? Bettas will build larger bubblenests. Loaches swim more frantically than normal. Tetra start breeding behavior. This isn’t just coincidence. Our fish do react to changes in the weather. 

Male golden gourami (Trichopodus trichopterus)
attending to bubblenest (Alberto Garcia @ flickr)

 Most fish in the hobby come from tropical waters where there are only two seasons: wet and dry. During the dry season, the water recedes and all the fish are cramped together. Competition for food and shelter is high. The dry season is ended by huge rainstorms, sometimes called monsoons. These, like any thunderstorms, are preceded by a huge drop in barometric pressure which fish can sense using their swim bladders. Through the millennia fish have learned that these huge drops in the air pressure mean rain and therefore more water is coming. This reduces the competition for food and shelter. With more resources, the parents won’t be in strong competition with their offspring. The adults can reproduce without fear that their offspring won’t be able to find enough food.

Fish also associate the drop in air pressure with reduced visibility at a later time. Storms and heavy rains will dirty up the water both by wave action and the runoff from the hills. As many fish are sight-predators and can’t hunt in murky waters, the drop in air pressure sets off an insane hunger drive. In the wild they ravenously feed until the water starts getting muddy or the thunder scares them into hiding. They do this because the water has can stay muddy for a few weeks at a time depending on the severity of the storm.

Sight predators like oscar (Astronotus ocellatus) and many cichlids have
high food food drives before a storm (Brynja Eldon @ flickr)

So while we may have taken the fish out of the wild, we still can’t take part of the wild away from the fish. Whenever the barometric pressure begins to drop, they still think the monsoons are coming!