Breeding Flowerhorn Part 2
Posted on
At the last posting we went over how to sex Flowerhorn, in this post we will go over how to keep a Flowerhorn pair.
Sexing Flowerhorn is not the end, it is actually just the start of the most difficult part of breeding Flowerhorn. The biggest difficulty with breeding Flowerhorn is that the male will be very aggressive with the female and somethimes will kill the female, occasionally within hours of putting them together. Male Flowerhorn can be relentless in attacking females (and other males). The good news is that there are several ways to deal with this problem:
• Sometimes you will get a breeding pair of Flowerhorn that are not overly aggressive towards each other. While this is rare, it can happen, and if you do get one of these pairs, you should count your blessings.
• The most effective way to get a Flowerhorn pair that will be good together is to plan well in advance. If you buy 6-10 Flowerhorn at a very small size, usually they will grow up without becoming fatally aggressive. They will still be very aggressive, but most of the time none get actually killed. The aggressiveness will start around 3 inches, so make sure you have many, many hiding places. Usually, the largest male Flowerhorn will pair off with the largest female Flowerhorn when they become mature. This breeding pair can then be kept in a separate tank together. Once again, while they will not kill each other, they will still be very aggressive, especially between spawnings, so please make sure there are plenty of hiding places. Often when you keep the ones left in a large tank, another Flowerhorn pair will separate out after you take out the first pair.
• Another trick is to keep them in a tank with a devider. This will keep the male Flowerhorn from killing the Flowerhorn female while they are not spawning. Once Flowerhorn start the process of spawning (we will go over this in a subsequent Posting), the breeding pair of Flowerhorn will stop being so aggressive towards each other. The female Flowerhorn will actually become the dominant one once the eggs are laid and will often chase the male off. Be careful with this technique as they will often go to great lengths to get together. I have experienced ripped screens, broken dividers, dislocated dividers, fish that tunnel under a divider and fish that will try and jump over a divider (sometimes ending up on the floor).
• The last, but least effective technique is to keep the female Flowerhorn in a tank by herself until she becomes so egg bound that she lays the eggs even without the male present. The problem with this technique is that when you introduce the male, he is often so stressed by the new surroundings that he does not fertilize the eggs. The percentage of unfertilized eggs is much greater with this technique.
