How to Breed Salt Water Dottybacks

Dottybacks are vividly colored coral fish. These somewhat aggressive little fish are popular among marine aquarists because of their hardiness and willingness to spawn in aquariums. Male dottybacks, which have an elongated caudal or tail fin, perform a mating dance in order to attract the attentions of an egg-laden female. The female will be enticed into a cave or rock crevice, where she will lay upward of a 1,000 eggs. These are subsequently tended by the male, who fans the eggs with his pectoral fins to oxygenate them. With patience, a hobbyist can be successful in rearing the larvae of these beautiful marine fish.

Things You'll Need

  • 20-gallon marine aquarium, incorporating filtration, heating, canopy and lights
  • Mated pair of dottybacks
  • Live food, such as adult brine shrimp
  • Pieces of PVC pipe
  • 10-gallon rearing aquarium
  • Sponge filter
  • Aquarium heater
  • Soft aquarium net
  • Live rocks
  • Zooplankton, in the form of rotifer
  • 50-gallon grow-out aquarium, with heater and filters
  • Live sand
  • Newly hatched brine shrimp
Show More

Instructions

    • 1

      Place a number of PVC pipes and live rock into the breeding aquarium. Live rock is marine rock, on which encrusting algae and sponge is growing. Minute crustaceans, such as copepods, can be found on it as well.

    • 2

      Observe the male's attempts to attract the female by dancing at the entrance to one of the pipes.

    • 3

      Watch the egg laying within the pipe to confirm a successful breeding.

    • 4

      Observe the male tending the eggs by fanning them and removing infertile eggs with his mouth.

    • 5

      Look out for the appearance of transparent larvae after a period of three to six days. These newly hatched dottybacks are similar in size to an exclamation mark on a typed page.

    • 6

      Add zooplankton in the form of rotifers to the aquarium twice daily for a month. The larvae will feed on these and other micro-organisms that live and breed on the live rock in the breeding aquarium.

    • 7

      Fill a 10-gallon aquarium with water from the main tank a month after the larvae have hatched. This size aquarium is suitable to rear up to 50 dottyback fry.

    • 8

      Place a number of pieces of live rock onto the bottom of the aquarium. A substrate is not necessary.

    • 9

      Place a sponge filter into one of the back corners and attach this filter, via transparent plastic air tubing, to a small vibrator air pump.

    • 10

      Set an aquarium heater to 83 degrees Fahrenheit and place it into the rearing aquarium.

    • 11

      Plug the vibrator pump and sponge filter into a power supply and turn both on.

    • 12

      Collect the month-old fry in a soft aquarium net carefully and transfer them to the rearing tank. At this point, the larvae will have metamorphosed into fry, which are miniature replicas of the adult dottybacks.

    • 13

      Add newly hatched brine shrimp to the aquarium as food for the fry, and allow them to feed freely from the live rock, as well.

    • 14

      Fill the breeding aquarium with freshly made up sea water after you have removed the fry.

    • 15

      Set up a 50-gallon aquarium after another month. Place live sand and live rocks into the aquarium. Move the growing young dottybacks into this "grow-out" aquarium.