# Has anyone bred Rummy Nose Tetras?



## King James

I am curious to see if anyone has bred Rummy Nose Tetras and how difficult or easy they are to breed and what type of environment it takes?


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## navigator black

I think they're mostly wild-caught, as they are very hard to breed. Many tetras are. From reading, it seems hobbyists back in the 1940s tried to breed a lot of fish we just consume nowadays, as they were expensive and hard to get, but the several species (Hemigrammus rhodostomus, Petitella georgia, Hemigrammus bleheri) sold as rummy noses were considered right up there in difficulty. 
I've managed to breed four or five different Characins, but they are really hard. Fishbreeders are spoiled by all the fairly easy Cichlids out there, and breeding things like this takes a lot of planning, research, water, food and and current manipulation, etc. Then you have to feed the fry....
I hope someone chimes in and says they bred them in a goldfish bowl, as that would be good news. I've had at least two of the rummy noses lay eggs in my tanks, but there were no fry to be seen and I expect the water hardness killed the eggs. There are breeding reports online, but very few, and the one breeder I know is one of the most meticulous, attention to tiny detail aquarists I have ever met.


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## scooterlady

I have a heavily planted 20 g long commuunity that my Lemon Tetras keep breeding in. I've done nothing special, but every now and then I find new fry in there. My Bolivian Rams have babies right now too...


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## snail

I think they are blackwater fish native to South America from the same pools as neon tetras, I'll check that.

If you are not trying to raise large numbers a permanent breeding tank works well for a lot of the harder fry. The idea is that you have a heavily planted tank with a sponge filter. There is a lot of hiding places and micro fauna for baby fish to eat. The parents are left in the tank and fed live food to condition them. To raise large numbers of fry the parents would need to be removed.


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## snail

There are some interesting details here: 
Aquarium Lore: Rummy Nose Tetra


> Breeding:
> There are few cases of successful breeding of this fish, and I assumed that this fish is quite hard to breed. Despite this, I found two published articles on people having successful breed Rummynose Tetra.
> 
> In Randy's article, it was noted that Rummynose tends to hang their eggs just below the surface of aquatic plants. In an experiment, Jiri Palicka set the water temperature to 62-68 F, and the ph to 6.6-6.7. Spawning takes place at night, and the female produce less than 5 adhesive eggs each time. Jiri Palicka noted that the eggs will hatch in 18 hours. I am unable to determine which species of Rummynose Tetra Jiri Palikca breeded.
> 
> In a separate experiment by Charles Drew to breed Hemigrammus bleheri, he set the ph of the water to about 6.0, and increased the temperature to 80 F. There were 2 males and 1 female in the tank. After spawning, the eggs took about 36 hours to hatch, and the fry took about 4 days to become free swimming.


Unfortunately the links to the articles don't seem to work.

A couple of people have info on this thread:
How to breed Rummy Nose Tetra?


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## paulant

Hi

I have bred rummy nose tetras successfully.
Pretty straight forward:-
10 gallon bare bottom tank, sponge filter and a few spawning mops, keep lighting dim, i use blue led lighting.
Water condition are PH 6, GH 1, temp 29 degrees celcius.
Place conditioned male & female in tank at night.
Usually early morning pair will spawn laying quite a few eggs all over tank.
When done remove pair to another tank and keep lights off, about 36 hours later eggs will hatch, add a few drops of liquidfry to start micro organisms developing. On third day start adding banana worms, continue with liquidfry.
Fourth day start hatching some brinshrimp still feeding banana worms. Fifth day feed brineshrimp and banana worms by now they should be eating nicely, you can see food in their bellies continue feeding shrimp till they take powdered food.


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## SueD

When I first got my rummys almost 2 years ago I got 7 of them. Went to buy 6 and since there were only 7 left, my LFS gave me the 7th one so it wouldn't be the only one left. Last time I counted, I counted 9!


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