How to Keep Neon Tetras? Detailed Guide to Care and Breeding

Also known as red neon tetra, neon light, red light fish (Hyphessobrycon innesi), originally distributed in Peru, tributaries of the Amazon River, Colombia, and Brazil. Characteristics: The neon tetra is one of the more famous ornamental fish among tropical fish. Body length 4 cm. The body is delicate and small. The whole body is covered with a cyan-green glow, with a bright blue-green band running from the head to the tail, and below the blue-green band on the rear half of the body there is also a red band, the belly is blue-white, and the red and blue bands run through the whole body, dazzling to the eye. Under different light or in different environments, the color of its bands becomes darker or lighter from time to time.

Keeping Characteristics

Gentle in temperament, easy to feed, likes to swim in groups ceaselessly in the middle and lower layers of the aquarium, and can be kept together with other species of fish. The keeping water temperature is 22-24°C, the water quality should be slightly acidic soft water, and the water color should be clear and transparent. The bait is mainly small live food. It likes to live in an aquarium with dim light, and direct exposure to strong light is prohibited. For daily keeping, the water quality should mainly be old water, and too much new water should not be added; otherwise it is prone to white spot disease.

Breeding Characteristics

The age of sexual maturity of the parent fish is 10 months. Distinguishing male from female is relatively difficult. Generally, the male fish is more slender; the female fish is plumper. On the bottom of a 30 cm X 25 cm X 25 cm fish tank, spread a full layer of hair grass. The water temperature is 5-26°C, and the water pH is 5.6-6.5. The adjustment should be carried out slowly so that the parent fish have an adaptation process (or use extremely soft double-distilled water, adjust the pH, and aerate for later use). Place a pair of parent fish in it in the evening; the female fish generally hatches the fry at dawn the next day, and after 4-5 days the fry swim and look for food. The female fish lays 200-300 eggs each time.

Breeding neon tetras is relatively difficult, mainly shown in the relatively high requirements for breeding water quality and the rather special care requirements for the fry. For breeding water, extremely soft distilled water must be used, then sodium dihydrogen phosphate is used to adjust the water pH to 5.6-6.5, then a relatively large air pump is used to aerate for 2-3 days, and it is poured into a wide-mouth glass bottle for later use. On the bottom of the wide-mouth glass bottle (mouth diameter 90 mm, height 180 mm, depth 130 mm) spread a layer of nylon mesh plate (the mesh size should be such that the parent fish cannot pass through), and on the mesh plate spread a little hair grass, then place a pair of parent fish in each bottle. To increase output, the hatching room usually needs 50-100 glass bottles.

In the evening, put pairs of parent fish into the glass bottles, and cover the surroundings of the bottles with paper to create a dim-light environment. Generally, egg laying begins the next day; observe once at around 10 a.m. Any parent fish that have finished laying eggs should be removed immediately; parent fish that have not yet laid eggs may remain in the bottles, and if the parent fish in a bottle still have not laid eggs by the third or fourth day, that bottle should also be removed. During the egg-laying period, the parent fish should stop being fed, so as to avoid spoiling the water quality. For bottles that have already had eggs laid, they should be gathered in one corner, and at 9-10 p.m. a manual egg-picking operation should be carried out once, sucking out all the unfertilized white eggs in the bottles with a pipette, and the fertilized eggs are gathered in a 30 cm X 25 cm X 25 cm fish tank to hatch. The water used in the hatching tank is the clearer upper-layer water poured together from the egg-laying bottles; because the breeding water for neon tetras is slightly acidic highly soft water, old water must be used as the hatching water and must not be replaced with new water. In each tank gather 400-500 eggs; after 48 hours the fry hatch, and the water temperature is always kept at 25°C. The surroundings of the tank are best pasted with paper, so as to avoid too strong light causing deformity in the fry.

Because the fry are tiny and move only a little, they can only feed when the bait reaches their mouths. For the first food, sieve egg-yolk gray water with a 200-mesh net, and feed it drop by drop with a pipette; after some time, when the fry swim normally, switch to feeding egg-yolk gray water sieved with a 150-mesh net. Because the fry grow slowly, the period of feeding egg-yolk gray water is longer than for other small species. In addition, the hatching water for the fry is extremely soft, and the water temperature is completely different from the daily keeping water temperature. When the fry grow to 5 mm, store part of the daily keeping water of the same temperature in a 50 cm X 40 cm X 40 cm aquarium, and gather the fry together with their water into the aquarium, so that the fry slowly adapt to the water quality of the daily water. At this time the fry can be fed small fish worms, and 1-2 tablets of oxytetracycline can be dissolved in the water to prevent bacterial infection. When the body surface of the young fish has red and green coloration, transfer them to a large aquarium 80 cm or 100 cm long for keeping, until they grow into adult fish.