I am interested in breeding three-spined stickelback in aquarium.
I want it to last at least a year. Does anybody have experience? Is it possible on room temperature, what they eat, how to find male and female specimens?
Reasonably easy. Separate males and females. Feed a high protein diet. Isolate males and provide nesting material. I use small lengths of green cotton. Once the male builds his best, introduce a female. Once she lays , remove her and allow the male to fan and tend the nest. Once the young hatch, remove the male. Feed on infusorians.
Agree with Culum Brown. Easy and entertaining. My student used true filamentous algae for nest building. If you only want to check for the nest and not the eggs you may insert the female in Erlenmeyer flask for the male to look at and then he starts building the nest. We got a lot of advices from Ian Barber (thanks Ian if you see this) who has worked a lot with sticklebacks. Check on his publications. Sticklebacks are very hungry and we gave them frozen Artemia daily. They easily survive the winter if you give them anough to eat and plants/algae to hide among.
You asked about where to catch them. I dont know in Estonia but here on the west coasst of Sweden we used metal minnow traps witout bait in the opening of small streams in spring time. During autumn they are in seagrass in masses both 1 and 0 group (see Baden et al 2012) and we use beach seine.
Good luck.
Thank you very much! Now I know that it is possible. I plan to start with growing sticlkeback next spring. So the more specific questions will come then :)
Just one question - is the room temperature ok for them and did you use artificial saline water?
Best!
Lennart
Hi again. Been to Tartu so I can imagine that you need artificial salt water if not storing the animals at a field station (any at beautiful Saremaa?). Actually you have freshwater sticklebacks so why not use them? depending on your research question of course. There could be some in lake Peepsi ?
I dont know how it works with art salt water. We used continuous flow of deep salt water (34%0) taken directly from the sea and thus having the seasonal temp variation. I think our minimum in winter is around 8-10 degrees.
Regards Susanne
Culum Brown, why do I have to remove the male after the young hatch?
What size of an aquarium would I use? Since the aquarium will be shown for children by teachers, I was thinking to build an aquarium with two chambers that are separated by glass and also possible to make the separative wall opaque.
Is it ok to use artificial plants in aquarium for stickleback - needs less care indeed, and I saw it on video here, Ian Barber is also figuring there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uikKXWWpjkU Is there more aesthetic looking plastic waterplants?
Easiest way for me is to catch them from sea. We have brackish water here. I think I try to introduce them to freshwater aquarium since they live here at the salt levels of 2-7psu. And also I will keep them on room temperature all the year.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Zoology
- Ichthyology