Breeding Neons

Question
Starting from November I've been trying to usucessfully breed neons.  I have 16 6 month - 1 year old Paracheirodon innesi.  They grew up in a 100 litre community tank with sinkwood, many plants, a couple of corydoras, one young plecko, five black neons, two chineese algae eaters, five danio rerio and few shrimp.  Last summer I bought a test kit and found out that water in my aquarium is PH 8.5, 280 ppm gh and ch, almost zero ammonia, nitrates and nitrites.  I started making weekly water changes with RO water (ph4!, almost 0 hardness) to lower both ph and hardness, in Novermber it became ph 7  less than 100 ppm hardness, plus I removed anything that could possibly cause hardness to rise.

For breeding I tried all kinds of setups.  I tried 5 gallon, 1 gallon tanks, with/without breeding mesh, I used rain water filtered throught peat, aged RO water, fresh RO water, I tried adjusting PH to be 7, 6, 5 and 4.  I tried adding  blackwater extract, different temperatures, tried flooding routines, imitated rain by adding colder water to the breeding tank.  One thing I learned is that neons are not as weak as they are beleived to be.  

Ironically I found out that they will spawn in 1 gallon tank with breeding mesh and claw of hornwort, in pure 2 days old RO water with a little salt and blackwater extract to make water color that of a deluted in half ice tea, 2 males 1 female, conditioned with grindalworms and seporated for 3 days.  I got more than 50 eggs, but all turn white and funguss.  I tried the same setup one week later, but added mythelyne blue, eggs fungussed anyway.  It happened three times in the row, so now I ran out of fish that is not tired and have to give them a rest.  I suspect they funguss because they are not fetilised by male.  In the conditioning tank I noticed that females are feeding much more agressively than males, which tend to stare at females and ignore the food.  

What do you think is the problem?

Thank you in advance

Answer
Hi Greg;

You've done everything I would have done, and more. Your knowledge probably surpasses mine in this area. You might want to post your question at the freshwater aquariums forum on About.com.; http://freshaquarium.about.com/

Here also are a few articles with details that may help you figure it out;

http://www.flippersandfins.net/tetrabreedingarticle2.htm
http://www.fishpondinfo.com/neon.htm
http://groups.msn.com/Breedingtropicalfish/neontetras.msnw
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/profiles/profile17.html

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins