how many for genetic divercity

Question: " How large a colony for guppies , mollies and shrimp would be needed to create a sustainable breeding colony with out producing cleetus fish?"

Background: I am Interested in creating a 5 trophic level modular enviroment and to have it be as naturaland self-staining as possible.

I.E. as large a volume of water (in the system) as possible. culturing infusoria, live plants, etc. etc. etc. and having it continue on.


So as always and direction to be pointed in would be appreciated. I'm scouring the web for this info.

BallAquatics said:

Here's a great guide ..... http://www.nanfa.org/captivecare/captive_breeding_guidelines.pdf

See section 2: BREEDING FOR GENETIC DIVERSITY

Dennis

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Thank you so much I am reading it now

FreshyFresh said:

Dennis, very cool read. Thing is, wouldn't the OP's plan, regarding live-bearers be a different ball game? They'll breed in a pail of water given the chance.

Jay, to my beginner mind, your plan sounds interesting for sure, but I'd think you'd have to do massive amounts of culling to keep populations at reasonable levels.

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Yeah the cull is not the problem numbers wise there is a great guy at my lfs who is super knowledgeable and is willing to take the fry so long as they are going to be viable for resale either as pet or feeder for the fish fry at least. The excess number of shrimp would be distrubuted amonst the tanks as clean up. So givin that all fish love to eat young shrimp. If not then I will use them for food for triops. I plan on a stable colony of triops being my system check / clean up crew. From what I have read on the net triops eat any and every thing and when they die (they are extreemly short lived) I can grind them up and use them for shrimp food/ fry food as they contain both calcium carbonate and protien. I'm also looking into culturing spirlina.

From what I have read up on the triops they require thier own almost if not distilled water to hatch then as they grow you can transition them to a more aquarium level of water. Supposedly they require super low osmotic pressure and will not hatch if the water is already inhabited reguardless of cleanliness amonia etc. Tap water is supposed to be "wrong" even declorinated.

So I am thinking that a ten gallon tank for them would be phase two in the water chain for this set up. Phase one would be declorination / distillation. here in new york there are no cloramines in the watter so the majority of the water for the system could be gassed for my purposes.

cool so tap water worked for you? is your tap the same as the tap in my area of new york? cuz not having to adjust or buy water would be much easier (one less step to screw up in this chain)

Same here. So the triops hatched huh? good to know.