Lately my zebrafish won't spawn until 3-4 hours after their lights go on. We have them on 14 hours light, 10 hours dark (8am-10pm light) using a light timer for the room they are in. Nobody is supposed to go in when it is dark. When I pull their dividers (male/female) they don't mate for hours. This is a major annoyance when trying to do microinjections. They lay a lot of eggs, with >90% fertility, just at the wrong time! Any ideas what could be causing this problem? Thanks :)
We had this problem when the light was accidentally switched on all the time. You could try and check whether the light really goes off at 10 pm as it should. Another idea is to train your fish by setting the crosses without separation first.
Elena Kardash is spot-on. My first suspicion would be that the lighting regime is not what you think it is. Check the lighting system to make sure it is working as you intended.
I found that by putting the males and females together an hour before the lights go off the previous day meant routine spawning an hour after the lights came on the next morning. I managed to produce thousands and thousands in this way day after day. Nutrition and maintenance of water quality was of utmost importance at temperature of 28.5 degrees celsius.
Lighten up y'all
Maybe they want to breed when they want to.. a bit like humans!
Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond. I have an update: yesterday I asked our cleaning person if she ever went into the fish room out of hours. She said she does to take the trash out at 7am, 1 hour before lights go on. She was proud to say she uses the main lab lights to see into the fish room without turning lights on. This might be the cause of the problem, so I asked her not to go in at all until 8am, so we will see if that improves things. I also noticed a small amount of light coming in through a ceiling vent and around the door to the fish room, so we have covered those now. I wonder how long it will take for the fish to adjust. I will keep you posted on how it goes. Wish me luck!
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