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Aquarium fishes
Aquarium fishes are broadly grouped into 2 categories on the basis of their breeding
behaviour, viz., egg-layers (oviparous) and livebearers (ovo-viviparous). Egg-layers
are further classified as egg-layers with no care (non-guarders), egg-layers with
care (guarders), egg buriers, mouth-incubators, nest-builders and egg-carriers on
the basis of parental care.
Egg layers
Important group of egg-layers are barbs, rasboras, goldfish, tetras, danios, betas,
angelfish and gouramis. Among them barb is one of the most important groups. Barbs
of Indian origin are rosy barb, striped barb and aruli barb. The major group of
danios includes gaint danio, pearl danio and zebra danio. Among rasboras slender
rasbora, glowlight rasbora and scissortail are the important ones. Goldfishes are
the most preferred fish for the aquarium keepers. Some common varieties being comet,
lion head, oranda, red cap, veil tail, shubunkin, bubble eye etc. The fish grows
up to 20 cm in length, but starts breeding when it is only 6 cm long.
The tetras are small fishes of 3-8 cm length that originated from South America.
Most common varieties are the black widow tetra, flame tetra, neon tetra and cardinal
tetra. The species, Betta splendens, popularly known as Siamese fighter,
occurs in varied colours. The males become aggressive in presence of other males.
Angelfish is an important group of aquarium fish with different varieties such as
black, veil tail, marble and albino. Among gouramies, three-spot gourami, pearl
gourami, moonlight gourami, giant gourami and kissing gourami are the important
species.
Striped barbs
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Rosy barb
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Redline Torpedo barb
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Rasboras
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Danios
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Lionhead goldfish
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Angelfish
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Neon tetra
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Siamese fighting fish
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Live bearers
They give birth to young ones and reproducing only a few numbers of offspring in
comparison to egg layers. Their breeding is relatively easy and development of young
ones takes place inside the female, which are released after about 4 weeks. The
common livebearers include guppy, black molly, swordtail, and platy. The number
of offspring produced by livebearers is between 50-100. If properly fed with natural
food, supplemented with better artificial feed, the mortality caused by predation/cannibalism
could be checked thereby survival rate of these offspring can be increased.
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Guppy
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Molly
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Swordtail
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Platy
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