Breeding Gold fish

A Butterfly Goldfish

Many love these bubbly creatures who swim around tanks without been shy. There are so many varieties of Gold fish and Most of them are easy to keep in Aquarium. They even very good as pond fish. Breeding Gold fish is not hard. You just need to know the basics like How to Gender Gold fish, How to setup breeding tanks and Their mating habits. Spawning usually happens in April to August which is warmer times. There are some good written about How to keep Gold fish covering their health, food and breeding. Having a book like that can be very handy. Fancy Goldfish: Complete Guide To Care And Collecting is one of the best books written about this subject which covers everything.

Preparing your Gold fish to breed is not hard. Make sure you feed them quality pelleted food like Hikari pellet feed, hard boiled egg york. Also live food can be a great quality food source but I know many don't like to feed live things to their pet fish. ( personally I don't do it too). Hikari Pet food products are known for their quality for decades. They have variety of Gold fish food for different kinds of Gold fish. Pick right type of good for your Gold fish and make sure to feed them in small quantities. Also don't over feed them. Gold fish are known has heavy nonstop eaters. It's not good for their health and also not for the breeding. Also this makes the leftover food decomposes in the tank and it's very bad for fish.  

How to Sex Goldfish 

Its not hard to sex Goldfish when you know what and where to look. Best way to spot males is they will develop white pimple-looking patches on their gill cover and pectoral fins. You can see tiny white dots on their grill plates which indicate that is a male. Females are more rounded than the males.

Conditioning Goldfish for Breeding  

This is not hard if you live in a tropical country but if you are in cold climate then there are few things which you need to to improve their boost hormonal drive for breeding. You have to increase temperature to 60 - 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Also give them longer hours of light and frequent water changes like 20-30% change daily.
This is the only time you can overfeed your Goldfish. You can feed them with all kinds of quality food for two - three weeks before attempt to spawn. You can give them high protein things like hard boiled  egg york, frozen foods etc for females to produce more eggs.

Separation and Tank Setup
 

You need to setup a breeding tank. You don't need very large tank for this. You need to add something like 3 males to 2 females rato. That's how it works > <. Gold fish do eat their own eggs. They do not have interest in parenting. So you must remove eggs or parents as soon as possible. Goldfish lay adhesive eggs that stick to stones at bottom or plants. These days breeders use something called spawning mops. These spawning mops are usually made by cutting off 16" lengths of nylon rope. One set of ends is tied together tightly, and the other ends are untwisted to make a big fluffy mop. Also you can use some floating plants for this too. After they lay eggs remove parents and then separate females just to give them some rest. This can prevent your female fish from getting over-stressed and affecting the immune system.

There are some very good books about keeping and breeding Gold fish which are wonderful reading material. Having couple of these books which shorten your learning curve and prevent having unnecessary accidents and mistakes which can led to death to these lovely fish.

Hand Breeding Goldfish

Hand Breeding or Hand Spawning is an advance method of breeding Goldfish or other carp types by experienced breeders. This is not something average fish keeper should do or try. I have seen it many times in real and also watched so many videos but still I'm not confidant enough to try it. Mainly because I worry it might be painful or hurt the poor fish.