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Breeding Diapterons
& Raising Fry

    Diapterons require water between 68 - 72° F to thrive and breed.  They should also be bred in trios, to prevent injury or death to the female from an overly aggressive male.  Each female should produce 2-3 eggs daily.  It is recommended that someone have some experience in keeping, breeding and raising fry of other Aphyosemion, including those a little more difficult like Cognatum, before trying to breed Diapterons.

    Diapterons will spawn in a well planted aquarium and you can also use the peat substrate and mop spawning methods.  If you use the mop method, you may wish to only pick off the eggs from the mop that are unfertilized and fungus, rather than handling all of the eggs.

    This also works if you have removed the eggs from the mop and have them laid out individually on top of a 1/8 - 1/4 inch bed of boiled peat moss.  This will help to keep the pH low and to retard some of the fungus on eggs and works well if you have something like a clear shoe box size container.  Leaving the eggs in the mop and putting this in a hatching tray like this after a week, here again using water from the spawning aquarium, seems to give some of the more fragile species a better chance and a better start.

    After the first fry have hatched (usually 14 - 21 days), everybody in the mop should be out in about a week, here is a good time to start checking the mop for eggs yet to hatch.  Depending upon the species, although all Diapteron fry are usually large enough to eat nauplii after hatching, some requiring even smaller first foods, microworms and vinegar eels also work well for fry. 

    A generous little patch of algae here and there in the hatching, that came from an infusoria/green water culture, usually provides fry with many sources of foods (snacks).  Once all fry have hatched, also put in a small snail, to help consume any uneaten microworms, vinegar eels, and newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii.  You can use a toothpick or a small paint set paint brush to feed microworms and brine shrimp nauplii to control overfeeding.  I do a weekly 25% water change of the hatching tray and I keep a slow to moderate airstone running at all times.

    After fry are about 3 weeks old, they're moved to a small 2.5 - 3 gallon aquarium (I've used a one gallon jar), that is half the water from their hatching tray and half the water  Some floating live plants are also added.  Depending upon the species and the rate of development and growth, I continue the fry on nauplii and if big enough, small grindal worms.  When they're all readily taking small grindal worms, this is usually a pretty good sign that they're ready to continue onto their grow-out tank.

    When it is time to go into the grow-out aquarium, simply put the one gallon of water with the fry into the grow out tank, that should already have a gallon of water in it, slowly adding a gallon per hour for the first couple, then it is usually pretty safe to fill up the rest of the grow-out tank with aged and water that has been set to about 6.8 and with some peat water with it.

    If you've got them going at this point, then there's a great chance you're going to have some killifish coming up.  After about a month to six weeks, the fry will be also doing well on crumbled up flake food.

    Fry should be kept in separate containers according to their size, because  Diapterons have been noted to eat each other.  Likewise temperature not only effects their growth, but also the sex ratios.  Try to keep Diapteron fry at about 70° F, as you should their parent.  Dipaterons take a long time to sexually differentiate and fully mature (about a year), so if they seem to be taking forever to mature, in contrast to other Aphyosemion species maturing in 3-4 months, this is perfectly natural.