Keeping peacock fish is not limited by space, you can keep them in a big aquarium or a small one. The first thing you need to do to keep a peacock fish is to choose the proper equipment and buy a healthy peacock fish. It is important to know how to buy healthy peacock fish. It is important to actually go to the store and carefully observe the fish in the tank to see if they are healthy? Are they swimming freely? Is the fish thick? Are the dorsal and caudal fins fully extended? The health or lack of health of the fish you buy and keep at home is one of the keys to experiencing the joy of fish keeping in the future.
Breeding equipment
Basic equipment such as a 30-60cm long tank, filter, bottom sand, warmer and fluorescent light are all you need. The most commonly used filter for keeping peacock fish is sponge filter because it can effectively filter the bottom sand. Beginners are advised to choose a device that has strong filtration effect and can maintain clean water. Peacock fish like filtered water. Before assembling the breeding equipment, if the water temperature has been adjusted and the water quality has been neutralized, buy the fish after everything is ready. Initially, you may want to consider purchasing 2 to 4 tanks at the same time, as healthy fish will gradually give birth to smaller fish, and soon the number of fish will increase, making one tank insufficient.
Water Stabilization
Peacock fish keepers like to use "water stabilizers" because they are easy to use with tap water. The new water used for water exchange must be fully mixed with tap water and boiled water, and must be adjusted to the original tank water without any temperature difference. 30---36cm tanks should try to replace a little more water; 60cm tanks only need to replace 1/2 tank water volume to achieve the effect of water exchange. There are many peacock fish owners who use BICOM and DDC nitrifying bacteria for water change, while some don't use them at all, but it's good to get into the habit of using them when you start keeping fish. Anyway, no matter if you use external biochemical products or not, you can't ignore the importance of maintaining water quality at all times.
Daily food
Peacock fish are fed with shrimp and various artificial feeds. Especially the larvae of the shrimp are the favorite of the peacock fish. The best-known source of yearling shrimp is the Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA. In recent years, the catch of the shrimp eggs has decreased and the price has become very high, so if you just want to raise the peacockfish to see her beauty, there is no need to buy this kind of expensive feed, and if you consider the cost, you might as well buy some dried eggs of the shrimp to hatch at home when you buy the peacockfish to feed them yourself. There are many high quality artificial feeds on the market, so you can prepare a variety of brands as supplemental feeds. Feeding juvenile shrimp or artificial feed must be careful to control the amount of food, feeding too much will pollute the water, in order to do a good job of regular management, the feed should also be rationed.
Daily management
Expecting peacock fish to grow healthily and beautifully, careful daily management is indispensable. The so-called daily management is the cleanliness of water change. The number of tails kept is also closely related to the frequency of water changes. For example, if you keep 20 fish in a 36cm tank, it is best to change the water once every 7 to 10 days. Observe the movement of the peacockfish when you feed them every day to determine if it is time to change the water. Peacockfish in a tank without water change will start to lose their appetite and will show the following obvious symptoms after being left in the tank: the male's caudal fins will start to dissolve or his eyes will be covered with a white film, and some of his fins will bleed, so it is necessary to change the water immediately. After the water change, the peacock fish will swim freely and freshly, and we will be infected with their happiness while enjoying them.
Breeding
Easy breeding is one of the attractions of peacockfish. Generally speaking healthy females over 4 months of age produce about once every 3---4 weeks. As long as the tank is over 45cm, the chances of the adults eating the fry after the wild stock has produced are reduced, but the more adults in the tank the higher the risk of the fry being eaten. There are aquariums that sell special fish harvesters, so you can put a large-bellied female into the harvester to wait for her to give birth. It is important to place the female in the incubator for as short a time as possible, so it is important to correctly determine when the female is about to give birth. The black part of the female's body and the bulging abdomen when she is pregnant will have a feeling that she is going to move 1--2 days before giving birth, and it is also important to pay attention to the fact that the fish collector should keep the space for the fry to swim to the water surface freely, if this point is ignored, the fry will not be able to reach the water surface, and will not be able to swim normally when they grow up. Alternatively, you can plant some watercress in a 30cm tank and let the watercress float on the water surface to form a natural floating seed picker.
Cultivation and selection of fry
The most important thing about cultivating peacockfish fry is that they need to be fed with enough juvenile penaeid shrimp. Newborn fry should be fed at least twice a day until they can swim freely. It is also important to weed out deformed fry and those that do not show any characteristics. It may seem cruel, but there is no other way but to carefully screen them in order to keep perfect individuals and to enjoy the beauty of a group of fish of the same species. Of course, no one will prohibit you from keeping all the fry if you do not want to screen them. How to select a good strain? In various books on peacock breeding, it is taught to select and dispose of those that do not match the characteristics of the species at an early stage. Move one male and two females with distinctive features that you like to a new tank and keep them carefully. No matter what method you use, you will have a chance to breed beautiful peacock fish if you don't compromise and carefully select them.
Disease treatment
After the introduction of the peacockfish from Singapore in 1993, it became clear to everyone what the fish diseases that profoundly affect the peacockfish are. From then on, the phrase "peacock fish is easy to keep" had to be elaborated into "healthy and disease-free peacock fish is an easy fish to keep. Tetrahymena corlissi, which, like white point disease, is of the ciliate group, is a parasitic fish disease that can be fatal to peacock fish. Fish are susceptible to this disease if they are too tired, too weak or too stunted. It is usually caused by rapid changes in water quality, overcrowding, etc. Once infected, the disease is not only difficult to cure, but also highly contagious, making peacock fish hobbyists shy away from it. The treatment is usually a medicated water bath for at least 1 month, with moderate adjustment of water pH and water temperature. Formalin bath is recognized as the best one. There is no way of knowing what will be the effective medicine. In fact if you buy a sick fish that is already infected, the cure rate is minimal. Moreover, the disease can be passed on to future generations of fish children and grandchildren, and it is very difficult to get rid of the root of the disease completely. That's basically it, if not you are buying new fish