33 Egglayers have many methods of laying their eggs
Description
This article is from the Aquaria: Good (and Bad) First Fish; Breeding FAQ, by Dean Hougen and Elaine Thompson
33 Egglayers have many methods of laying their eggs
Egg scatters usually scatter eggs around weeds, or onto gravel. The
male chases the female during spawning, and the eggs are fertilized as
they fall. Spawning runs can be spectacular to watch since the fish
race around the tank and ignore anything else, including food.
Examples of egg scatterers are tetras, barbs, rasboras, and danios.
Substrate spawners are a little choosier about where they put the
eggs. They lay eggs that attatch to some sort of substrate. Plants,
rocks, wood, and even the aquarium glass may be chosen as a spawning
site. Both fish participate in the egg laying, with the male
fertilizing the eggs as the female lays them. Examples of substrate
spawners are many catfish, some cichlids, and killifish.
Bubblenest builders lay their eggs in a nest of bubbles blown by the
male fish. The bubbles are held together with saliva and look like
foam. They tend to attract infusoria that the babies can eat, and keep
the eggs at the surface of the water, where they are well-oxygenated.
The eggs are laid a few at a time, and carefully placed in the nest
where they hatch. Examples of bubblenest builders are bettas and
gouramis.
Mouthbrooders actually keep their eggs in their mouths until the eggs
hatch. The eggs are again laid a few at a time, and once the male
fertilizes them, the parent doing the mouthbrooding gathers them up in
his/her mouth. That parent eats sparingly, if at all, until the baby
fish are released. Examples of mouthbrooders are male arrowanas and
female cichlids.
Marine fish also lay eggs. Some are substrate spawners, but many lay
pelagic eggs that float in the plankton. There the eggs hatch into a
larval stage, and the larvae float freely and eat tiny plankton until
they grow into fish. See the Moe reference for a more complete
description.
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