How to Breed Goldfish

Video Transcript

"This is Chris from Aquatic Central, here in San Fransisco, and on the web at aquatic-central.com, and today I'd like to tell you how to breed a goldfish. first thing is to gather the required materials, which would be, preferably at least a 20 gallon tank, you'll need a filtration system, preferably a sponge filter, and a heating system, providing that you can maintain the water temperature at about 72 degrees Fahrenheit, you'll need some sort of plants, preferably live or a spawning mop, which is basically just a household mop, a clean one at that, anywhere the eggs can stick and you can easily remove them after they've been released. You'll probably want a separate 5 to 10 gallon tank after the eggs have hatched so that you can rear them. You'll need some food for the eggs, possibly micro worms or freshly hatched brine shrimp. What you'll do is, you'll cycle your fish tank, condition it for chlorine, chloramine first, cycle it for about 2 to 3 weeks, make sure that it's run through the nitrogen cycle. Then you can add a male and a female goldfish, approximately at least 3 years old, it don't need to be adults, and they are hard to distinguish. And the most important thing is you'll need to plan ahead as they only mate once a year, in spring. As they near spawning, as they're almost ready, the female will plumpen up quite large, and the male will develop these white spots around his gill plate. A female will release eggs, they will stick to the surfaces of whatever you have placed inside. Then a male will fertilize the eggs, and you'll notice this is happening by the water becoming quite cloudy. At this time it'll be ideal to remove the parents from the eggs, either by replacing the eggs into the separate 5 gallon tank, or by removing the male and female into the separate 5 gallon tank. Regardless which tank the fry are in, that's the tank where you'll want the sponge filter. And you'll want to lower the water level to about 5 to 6 inches, so that the weight of the water doesn't crush them, and so they can come up for air. It's pretty much all that's required to breed a goldfish. Again, my name is Chris from Aquatic Central in San Fransisco, and on the web at, aquatic-central.com"