white cloud mountain minnow preggers?

[MyraVan]

I just got 3 WCMM from the almost-local (about 15 miles away) fish shop. I have bought fish enough times that I really should remember to take a good look at the fish in the bag before I take them home, but this time I didn't. Now I'm acclimatizing them to the new tank, which is a 5 gallon tank with only two snails in it at the moment. Two of the fish look fine, but the third, the largest one, has a very big belly. Nothing else looks unusual about it, and the swelling is confined only to the belly. I looked very closely at it and couldn't find any raised scales, so I don't think it has dropsy. So I wonder if this one is pregnant? I have heard that breeding WCMM is very easy, so maybe I've got one all ready to drop her eggs...

[fish_doc]

You very well might have. If not though that is why you have the isolation tank. Keep a eye on her and hopefully you got lucky. You can isolate them long enough then have her lay the eggs and then move them to your main tank leaving only the eggs in your new breeding tank.

[Larry-T]

Of couse, you need both a male and a female ready to breed in order to have fertile eggs. White clouds are easy to breed and will not eat all of the eggs. There are many, many cases of people having a school of white clouds in a planted tank and then starting to see fry swiming around in the plants. They are adhesive eggs spawners, so the pair will lay eggs in fine-leaved plants and then pretty much ignore them.

The main thing to remembe is that the eggs are not fertile until a male fertilizes them AS THEY ARE LAID. If you isolate the female, you'll never get fry.

[Mr Aquarium]

Thanks for that info Larry, I love whiteclouds, got a guy mailing me the copy of the Artical in this months one fish magazine about white clouds.

[MyraVan]

Well, two days later and Mrs. White Cloud is still swimming happily around the tank with a big belly. I phoned up the shop and they think that she'd probably just full of eggs. So I'll continue to keep an eye on here, but I'm not so worried as when I got a good look at her in the bag and immediately thought "dropsy"!

[MyraVan]

Hmmmm. With more observation, Mrs White Cloud seems to be hiding in the plants, while her two friends are out swimming around the tank. Is this normal behavior for a WCMM full of eggs? (Is there a technical term for "full of eggs"?)