Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I recently set up a 55 gallon aquarium with the hope of breeding some white tipalpia. I tried to sex them, removed a few upper lips...hopefully on the males. I have introduced the females and they where all doing well. This AM, my one male has ragged gill fins and looks to be in rough shape. He(she?) is still eating, but is not looking very healthy. Should I, euthanize him, put in in the outdoor AP system, or leave him alone and monitor? It looks like he has been attacked my the other fish, but I haven;t witnessed any attacks. Not sure about the success of this experiment. My water has been too low 75-76 degreesF. My heater is malfunctioning, and I'm waiting for new one. Hopefully raising temps to 84-85 will get them in the mood.lol A local guy has his in an outside pond, and they breed like rabbits. Just very hard to access and control any variable.

From what I understand, you only want one male to breed with the females. They can get aggressive with each other otherwise. Then again, I have not set up my fry tank yet anyways, so I could be all wrong!

Thanks Ron. After reading every resource article I could find, I determined a 55 gal should be fine with 2 males and 6-7 females. The problem is trying to figure out which is which. Proves a difficult task for someone with no fish sexing experience. They don't look like the pictures. lol I hope that I ended up with that amount, but honestly I'm not sure. May have snipped the lips off a female or two. Hope the PETA people don't find out. Judging from their behavior, I still may have more males, but have read that there are females that can be extremely aggressive as well. I'll just worry about the ammonia and nitrates for now, and let Darwin's theory pan out.