Question: I’m watching my girlfriend’s pet fish while she is on a marine biology expedition in Belize. I was having a party and someone spilled PBR in the fish tank. I guess tropical fish are really sensitive because they all went belly up. After a trip to the pet store I found out that tropical fish are expensive, like $50 apiece. I love my girlfriend but I really don’t want to replace $1,750 worth of fish. But I figure I could buy two fish and breed them before she gets back. How do fish mate?
How Do Fish Mate?
First of all, I hope your girlfriend dumps you as soon as she gets home. She no doubt had the tank properly covered, which means that you or one of your pathetic friends got drunk, opened the fish tank and poured beer into it.
Now, actually fish mate in three different ways.
- Oviparity. A female fish expels eggs that are then externally fertilized. The eggs, once fertilized, mature independently.
- Ovovivparity. The eggs are produced and hatched in the female’s body but lack a placental connection to the mother. The fertilized eggs are expelled in a yolk sack that is gradually depleted as the eggs develop into fish.
- Viviparity. Retention of the fertilized egg within the maternal body until the offspring is fully developed.
How do fish mate? Photo by Nebulant/Flickr.com
There are also 21 kinds of hermaphrodite fish. These rare fish are either simultaneously hermaphrodites – meaning that they always have the ability to reproduce on their own or they are sequential hermaphrodites – they are born either female or male but later become the opposite gender. Not likely that this is the case with your girlfriend’s recently departed fish, so don’t try going to the pet store and asking for hermaphrodite fish, cheapskate.
How to get tropical fish to mate in an aquarium is complicated to say the least. You should wait until your girlfriend gets home and just tell her the truth. For whatever unfathomable reason, she may forgive you and will most likely have the expertise to successfully breed her own tropical fish, thereby saving you the $1,750 you would have spent, rendering the question “How do fish mate?” pretty much full of water, bucko.
