Progress with Aphyosemion celiae

I have a breeding pair of A. celiae in a 10 gallon aquarium filled about 2/3rds with aged peat water. The fish eat flightless Drosophila melanogaster and brine shrimp. The tank has a hinged glass Versa Top lid, with scotch tape covering the airline entrance. The water has had the Calcium and Magnesoum ions replaced with Sodium ion via an ion-exchange resin, and so is moderately soft. In the tanks are two light green mops made of synthetic yarn; they are long enough to extend over the floor of the Aquaeon All-glass aquarium. Also in the tank is a pyrex dish with 1" of peat; the peat was  boiled prior to introduction. Both of those media are in the back of the tank.In the foreground is a shallow tray of large pebbles, say 1/2 centimeters in their long dimension. The tank also has a small Penn-Plax box filter from Walmart; it has gravel in it.

I check the eggs in one mop every other day. Checking only one at a time provides cover and minimal disturbance. The eggs are amber, probably from the peat. Usually I'll get 5-8 medium sized eggs; not a lot, but enough for me to process before work. By contrast the A. primagenium and Epiplatys dageti produce about 15 eggs per batch.

I remove the mop eggs and place them on top of previously boiled peat in a shallow pyrex bowl, cover the dish with an opaque top, and slide the covered bowl onto a shaded shelf near the floor of the fishroom. I can see the eggs with my reading glasses; the idea is to hatch them later and get a brood all the same size. Stay tuned. Meanwhile babies from eggs I did not remove swim around happily with their parents.

A local friend who gave me the pair has a different approach. He covers the bottom of the tank with 2mm gravel. After the pair have been in the tank for a while he siphons up the debris between the gravel grains. The water, debris, and eggs are dropped into a pail. Later he stirs up the water, and finds that fry have hatched out.

We breed wild type Zebrafish over marbles, a similar technique. The sexes are separated for about a week, heavily fed, then put together in a shoebox over a single layer of glass marbles after dark, usually 3 males to one female very full of roe. We remove the parents and then the marbles to find many eggs. Large batches of small fry are raised in shallow plastic trays with aeration. They are fed Paramecium until they are large enough for newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii.

With this and my friend's technique in mind I removed the pebbles in the A. celiae tray, one at a time (347 pebbles) to find no eggs. My fish seem to prefer the mops.