"Robb Bloomfield" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi,

Noticed last night that one of my silver sharks, and to a lesser
extent, two others, have swollen bellies. The fourth shark is slim and
sleek looking still. Do they produce eggs in large quantities which
are then fertilised by the male? Are they carrying fertilised eggs?
Are they carrying live young? Are they just fat

The only info I could find on the web said they were difficult to breed
in captivity - i couldn't find anything else.


Whooo, egg-bound Silvers? That's awesome. How big are they? To answer
your questions, they produce eggs, in what I would suspect to be fairly
large quantities, which are externally fertilised by the male. By
actually looking I might be able to better guess between fat or
egg-bound. *calm calm*

Let's first establish that your Silver sharks (or Bala Sharks or Tricolor
sharks depending on where you live) are actually Balantiocheilos
melanopterus (Bleeker, 1951) by checking these links.
http://www.aquariacentral.com/specie...view_records=1
http://species.fishindex.com/species...a_shar k.html

If eggs, then the edge closest to their tail where the eggs start will be
much more well defined, than if it was just a fat fish. Note that
getting the females full of eggs is still a long way from a successful
spawning, but it's a lot closer than if they had no eggs ;~). The next
thing you'll need is a big tank (and lots of vegetation, increase the
water temperature while dropping the pH, dance the wild coyote to Mel
Tourme... oops, better stop before someone thinks I know what I'm talking
about ;~).
--
www.NetMax.tk