r/medaka

Hi, I'm a first-time medaka keeper looking for advice to help a specific fish. I got 5 juvenile medaka from my LFS a little over 2 weeks ago and put them in a planted 20 gallon. Unfortunately, after they've grown up a bit it looks like all but maybe one of them are male. The rest seem to get along well enough with their own little territories and brief chasing, but the one I'm not sure on spends its time hiding in the plants (so it's hard to get a good pic), and doesn't appear comfortable enough to venture outside of them for food. It doesn't look sick at all or like there's anything physically wrong- it does eat when food is in range, but it's just very timid. In the meantime, I've added more plant cover, but I wanted to ask for advice on if there's anything I can do to help it long-term.

For example, I have a planted 5 gallon I could move a few of them to, but I'm worried that'd stress them out or cause more bullying no matter which of them I move. I did ask the LFS about it and was told that it could be by itself in the 5 gallon, but can't find anything online about doing that. I'll look into returning it if that's the best option, but I don't know if the 30 minute drive and transfer would be even worse for it. I also thought about buying more to try to balance out the female/male ratio, but I'm worried that could still end up with too many males or more aggression. I really enjoy these fish, and I'd like to give them the best lives I can.

Sorry this is long, and thanks for reading this far!

So I've been keeping Medaka for a while and generally have just had them spawn in a colony and it works out well, some of the fry survive and grow into the adults etc etc...

I recently picked up a somewhat rare and expensive pair from a breeder and I wanted to increase their numbers so I put them in a heated cycled tank with a bunch of floating plants and some intense 12+ hour lighting and within a week the female was pumping out some pretty impressive numbers of eggs. There's a couple of Neo's in there but they mostly stick to the bottom while the lights are on.

I cannot for the life of me save any of the eggs. I have children and a full time job so I admit I'm not super vigilant but usually I check in the morning and she has a full cluster, and I come home on my lunch break and I've found one egg on one of the spawning mops and that's it. In three days, I've got one egg.

I added more spawning mops and I removed some of the floating plants to check each one individually and I have come up with none.

So I have a few questions, when exactly does the male fertilize the female? Can I just remove the male (who may be the one eating the eggs who knows) in the morning and plop him back at lunchtime? If I remove her in the morning and pull the eggs off will they be fertile? I don't want to overly stress her so that might be a last resort. If I got a bunch of spawning mops would it help the eggs hide better? I currently have three in a cluster. Most of the surface was covered in floating plants but it didn't seem to have helped.

Any advice is appreciated.

It seems I've just gotten unlucky with an overly egg hungry pair.

Forgive me if this already exists here!

For every beautiful little container pond and happy, healthy new strains, often here people are posting fish in less-than-ideal conditions, sometimes with "mystery" illnesses.

I am bummed to read so often about the lack of knowledge or care around water quality, seasonality, illness, stocking, filtration, stress etc.

It's not the fault of any individual; the marketing around ricefish being sooo easssyyyy has been to their detriment and information on fishkeeping is dense and hard to navigate in general. They are a GREAT hobby fish and so much hardier than many others. But they still need proper care!

In an effort to make information a little more accessible, would the mods of this group be open to pinning a collaborative post with basic care recommendations + illness troubleshooting guidelines?

I think those who have been in the fishkeeping game for a bit take basic knowledge for granted and I think it would be nice to have a tiny resource library for those who come here looking for more support.

Hi all! I know buying medaka eggs is controversial, but I learned that in retrospect! I now have 40 eggs to hatch.

I just want to ask how cloudy is too cloudy? I took out the eggs I was certain were moldy or unfertilized, but the rest I'm not sure. Most are very perfectly transparent and I can see the fish's eyes and body. A few, however, are a little bit less transparent, but I can still see the fish's body and eyes and I'm not confident enough that the egg is dead or rotting--it's just not perfectly clear like the others. Is that cause for alarm? Are some eggs just not as translucent as others?

To those of you experienced breeders out there: have you found that there is an imbalance in the number of male fry to female fry? I seem to get many more males than females, like 70% males to 30% females.