gardenman

I would prefer to never drill the bottom of a tank. When something goes wrong in such a situation, the whole tank drains. There are easier ways to hide airline tubing. You can simply silicone it into a back corner and then run it along the back bottom of the aquarium and even include elbow and tee fittings with short airline tubing stubs with plastic air valves to feed current, and future needs. All of the stuff along the back wall can be siliconed in place and buried in the gravel. Someone would really need to search to figure out how you got air down there. It's easier to hide the airline tubing than the sponge filter. You can buy all kinds of airline tubing fittings these days. Two ninety degree plastic elbows, one to turn the airline from vertical to horizontal at the corner where it's glued in and the other at the far end with an airline tubing stub and valve. However many tees and valves you might want for future expansion, one every eight to twelve inches seems about right. All of that except for the tubing coming down in the corner could be hidden under the substrate and invisible. Need to add an airstone later? You know where the available stubs are, simply dig through the substrate, find the valve, open it to blow out any substrate, close it, attach the airline tubing to the airstone, adjust the airflow using the valve, cover everything back up with the substrate. Boom! You've got invisible air wherever you want/need it.

Just an update if anyone's interested. The baby plecos are doing great. Most of the yolk sac has now been absorbed. They're now more like 70% fish and 30% yolk sac. A few are even more fish than that. There have only been three casualties and those were fry that hatched out inside the egg mass and apparently couldn't escape. It wasn't until I was removing the old eggs that I found them. The airstone has been removed from the breeder box and the air-driven water supply tube inserted to send fresh aquarium water to the fry. The airstone is better for circulating water around the eggs, but now the babies are pretty close to starting to eat and then poop, so connecting them to the big tank's biofilter is now more important. The exit gate for the water has the fine grate on it and also a piece of filter material to stop any babies from deciding to head for the big tank. I've added a small piece of slate leaning against the wall of the breeder box to give them a cave-like place to hang out, but they tend to cluster together in a corner of the box instead. About six take advantage of the cave now. The first little (emphasis on little) piece of Repashy Soilent Green has been added. No apparent interest in it just yet, but in a few days they should really start feeding. I'd collected a big bag of old maple tree leaves a few years back to experiment with as a replacement for Indian Almond leaves, but I never got around to doing anything with them so one of them has been added to the breeder box. We'll see if they nibble on that or not in the coming days. I've got some Cholla wood coming from Amazon and if any of it is small enough, it'll go in there also. I may have to cut/break off a piece. The babies are now about 3/8" long and filling out a bit. No apparent albinos in the group as there are lots of black eyes staring back at me whenever I get down to watch them, but no red eyes. Still impossible to get a real count on the number of babies but 80+ is a reasonable estimate. A few are getting more adventurous and starting to free swim a bit more away from the pack. That will increase in the coming days. Right now about ninety percent of the fry are in about five percent of the breeder box. In a few days they'll be all over the place. There's this orange wriggling blob now in the right front corner of the breeder box but in a few more days they'll spread out all over the box. I've got an in-tank net breeder ready to go when they get more adventurous to move some to, to prevent the breeder box from becoming too crazy. You just have to be careful with the net breeders as some fish learn to peck at babies from the outside of the net and suck them through the net. It's not as big of an issue with free swimming fish, but for bottom dwellers like plecos and corys who are likely always on the net, it can be an issue. Once these guys get to a half inch or so and fill out a bit it's not as big of an issue. I've got two papa plecos guarding new clutches of eggs in the big tank, but those guys/gals will be on their own. Typically, only three or four survive to adult size in the big tank due to the swarm of swordtails in there. The other plecos don't bother the fry but the small fry are like candy to the swordtails.

I've got duckweed, red root floaters, salvinia minima, frogbit, water sprite, water hyacinths, and dwarf water lettuce all as floaters and I love them. (Not so much the duckweed.) The frogbit, water sprite, water hyacinths, and water lettuce have long roots that go deep into the water if that's a look you want. The salvinia and red root floaters have shallower roots and don't descend into the tank as much. The deep roots give fry hiding places if that's a priority of yours. All of them need to be weeded out fairly frequently or they'll block the surface completely.

It's not unheard of. If you want to extend the life of your filter cartridges you can cut some lengths of quilt batting and wrap them around the cartridges to intercept the dirt before it hits the cartridge. Then swap out the quilt batting instead of the whole cartridge when it gets soiled. You can double or triple the life of the filter cartridges doing that and quilt batting is very inexpensive.

Obviously, you'll need more than one. Six would be a safer number to start with. I'd plant the tank, add lots of caves, some driftwood, and play around with various foods. If you're keeping them happy, well fed, and have a pair, they'll likely breed. Some plecos in the wild breed in mud caves, but mud in aquariums is not ideal. If they think they have to dig a mud cave to breed, you might have issues. Try different things for caves and different sizes. My Super Reds all want to breed in one one inch diameter pvc pipe cave instead of the other options. They can barely fit in the cave, but it's the one they want.

I like the open top type hatchery. I use the San Fran Bay brand kit that uses a cut off soda bottle. I put a light (small flashlight) at the base of the unit and turn off the air. In about ten minutes the eggs will have floated or sunk and a cloud of baby brine will be near the light. I go in with an old turkey baster (squeeze the bulb tight before putting it in) and suck up that cloud of baby brine shrimp. Then I put my brine shrimp net over the top of the container and empty the baster into the net so the water drains back into the hatchery, but the baby brine stay in the net. That keeps the water level in the container more stable. Then off to my 50 gallon tank that has my breeding colony of neon swordtails and give the net a swirl and watch the feeding frenzy commence.

For a planted tank things like Safe-T-Sorb can be used as a substrate. It's very similar to Fluorite but much cheaper. Sites like e-Bay and Aquabid can often get you nice plants at a good cost. By the time you factor in shipping costs, packaging costs and the like, you're often paying less than a dollar per plant and helping a fellow hobbyist. I tend to look at those sites first when looking for plants these days. They're typically grown submerged so there's less melting. (Assuming you're buying from a fellow hobbyist and not a retailer.) Sponge filters are a cheap and effective means of filtering a tank. The cheaper ones tend to lose airflow over time, but popping apart the bottom section and shortening the nub on the bottom of the air outlet solves that. I like the T-5 shoplights on Amazon for tank lighting these days. You can get them in 6500 K in two and four foot lengths at low costs and can daisy chain them together. (The two foot ones are getting harder to find though.) The used marketplace is typically way too highly priced for most aquariums and supplies, at least locally. We had a local thrift store that was asking $25 for a bare 10 gallon tank a while back and you could buy one new at Walmart for half that. Waterlily fertilizer tabs are often bigger and cheaper than those sold for aquarium plants, but function as well if not better and are generally fish safe. At Amazon right now 10 API root tabs for aquariums are $6.74, but 25 API Aquatic Plant Food tablets for ponds are $6.79. You'll want to monitor your levels and be cautious using them but the savings can be dramatic. Because they're bigger you may need fewer or wish to break them up into smaller pieces. A bit of experimenting is wise. Buying common items in bigger quantities can often save you a lot. You don't pay much more for a large spool of airline tubing than a smaller one but you don't need to race out to get more tubing frequently. Rocks are a good thing to pick up at landscapers. Slate is especially handy as it can usually be broken easily and even split into thinner sheets. One piece of slate used as a stepping stone can often supply all the decorative rock you need for an aquarium with some judicious breaking and splitting. Slate was originally sedimentary which means it formed in layers. It's pretty easy to separate back into thinner layers in many cases and you may even find a fossil or two tucked away inside the layers. Just use a thin putty knife and tap along an edge to see if a layer or two will split off.

Nutritionally they should be similar, but there are other pros and cons. To some extent the decision between live and frozen depends on what you're feeding. If you're feeding mid-water fish or top level fish, live baby brine is better. The live shrimp swim and stay in the water column longer. If you're feeding corys, plecos, or loaches/bottom dwellers, frozen brine will be better as it'll sink to the fish. (Live baby brine will eventually sink also, but it has to die first.) Commercially produced live baby brine may be more nutritious than home-raised as commercial producers are more bottom line oriented. They want to maximize production so as soon as the baby brine are hatched they're likely gathered, harvested and frozen as quickly after hatching as possible, giving the live baby brine less time to use up their food reserves, resulting in more food for the fish eating them. A home aquarist may let the baby brine linger a bit longer after hatching and every second the baby brine shrimp is alive it's consuming nutrients that could go to the fish instead. Most hobbyists don't feed their baby brine shrimp, so the shrimp are consuming whatever food reserves they have at hatching and not gaining more. Commercial producers may be feeding their baby brine to create adult brine shrimp for production down the road which could result in increased nutrition for the shrimp and ultimately the fish that eat them. Is there a drastic difference? Probably not.

And here's a new close-up (still a bit blurry) but you can see the little red dot and the veins. The red dot is the heart that you can see pumping away in person. And there are more than I'd originally counted as I've found more hiding all over the tank. I'd put the number of fry at closer to 80-100 now. It's a big spawn. For perspective on the size, the fry are maybe a quarter of an inch long. You can see how small the heart is relative to the size of the fry.

I grew them in the past and they did fine.

They're really neat to observe at this size as they're pretty much see through. You can see their tiny little two chamber heart beating away through the yolk sac. You can see the tiny little veins running through the yolk sac. They're like a living biology lab in front of you. I sit on the floor watching them for far too long each day. Their sucker mouth is fully developed already and they hang onto whatever surface is available. A lot of baby fish don't eat until the yolk sac is completely absorbed, but plecos, being the ravenous beasts that they are, will often start eating even before the yolk sac is absorbed, so you've got to be prepared for that. My phone camera (Moto G7 Optimo Maxx) does a decent job of getting images, but not quite good enough to catch the heart beating. Mind you I am shooting through plastic at something about a 64th of an inch in size (if that when I'm talking about the heart). It's fascinating to watch though. One side beats and empties out then the other side beats and empties out and then back to the first. I'll add a tiny sliver of Repashy Soilent Green to the tank tomorrow and see if they show any interest. Later on green beans, algae wafers, tubifex worms, shrimp pellets, maybe some frozen baby brine shrimp, will get tried out. With 67-ish babies in there I don't have to worry a lot about overfeeding once they start eating. Keeping them fed is the bigger challenge then. They're now maybe a quarter of an inch long. In a month or so they'll be about a half inch long. When they get about three-quarters of an inch long I'll start shifting them to the 20 gallon tank behind them for their grow out tank. I've got some bigger corys in there and some neon swordtails, so I'll need some decent size on them before moving them. I have a mesh breeder also that will go inside the tank and I'll transfer some to that as they get a bit bigger. The mesh breeders though can have adult fish picking the babies off from the outside and eating them through the net. That's not as big of an issue with free swimming fish, but with guys who will be lying on the net like a pleco or a cory, it becomes more of an issue. Once they get about a half-inch or so long then they should be safe in the mesh net. I'll likely lose a few along the way, but for now, all 67-ish look good and healthy.

And the eggs have all hatched this morning and there are about 67 baby Super Red Bristlenose plecos now hanging out in the breeder box. (I say about 67 as even counting them in the photos is challenging and I'm likely to have miscount a little bit.) There appear to be no unhatched eggs which is good. I'll go in later and remove the empty shells but there are too many baby plecos too close to the empties right now to make that easy. They'll spread out across the breeder box as the day goes on and I'll then swoop in with an old baster and suck out the empties. I'll start adding a little bit (emphasis on little bit) of food starting tomorrow in case they start feeding before fully absorbing the yolk sac, but the algae on the plant gives them some food also. Here's a photo of the whole blob all hatched out and distributed through the breeder box. These are arguably the easiest fish in the world to spawn and raise.

We're up to nine hatched out this morning at 10:30 AM with many more to come. For those who think I'm exaggerating about the 70% yolk sac and 30% fish, here's a photo of one of the newly hatched out guys/gals already putting their sucker mouth to work on the side of the breeding box. That huge orange blob is the yolk sac. The little sliver of flesh is the fish. The rest of the eggs all look very good and you can see the little eyes of the unhatched plecos and their spine through the egg cases. They should all be hatched over the next 24 hours or so.

You might want to look into grow lights instead of aquarium lights. They tend to be more red/blue spectrum and less "white." Most aquarium lights are designed to make viewing the fish optimal and plant growth is a secondary consideration. If you don't mind the red (purplish) glow then a pure plant light might be your best option.

The general rule with all fish is if another fish will fit in its mouth, it'll eat it. That includes faster growing fry eating their slower growing brethren. People talk about a "dog eat dog", uh, no. It's a fish eat fish world is more accurate. Parent fish eat fry, fry eat one another, fry eat eggs, parents eat eggs, if eggs could figure out a way to eat fry or the parents they probably would. To some extent it's necessary. If you ever do the math on how many guppies could be produced in one year from one original pair, it's a staggering number. Mature guppies can produce as many as 200 fry every 28 days. The fry can start spawning at 3 months. If half the fry are female, you start getting into some pretty astronomical numbers pretty quickly. If they all survived, the world would be knee deep in guppies in a few years time. If you do the math, assuming 100 new fry per spawn with 50% female and the fry spawning after three months, you end up with around 2 million guppies at the end of the first year from that one pair. And that number increases drastically each month after that. You need one heck of a lot of baby brine shrimp to feed that horde.

I'm of 'the better safe than sorry" school and would probably recommend removing the dime-sized fry, assuming you could do so without unduly upsetting the parents. You don't want to be chasing them around the tank with a net like a mad person and freak out the parents who then may destroy their newly laid eggs, but if you can gently and quietly remove the fry without causing undue ruckus, it might be safest. That would protect both the older babies and new ones. You'd just want to do it in a manner that would be the least upsetting to the parents. Dime-sized fry might find the wrigglers of newly hatched babies irresistible and gulp them down.

My Super Red Bristlenose Plecos are mostly carnivores and partially vegetarian (mostly on green beans.) Even with thirty-plus Super Reds in my 50 gallon tank, I have to scrape the algae. In fact, I'll be doing it later today as it's building up pretty good. If there's anything meaty (shrimp pellets, tubifex worms, etc.) in the water they swarm all over it.

Making Repashy is easy-peasy. I make small batches at a time so I use a teaspoon of Repashy to a tablespoon (3 teaspoons) of boiling water. Stir it up to blend and then let it set up in the fridge. When ready to feed, cut off however much you want and plop it in the tank. I have about 30-ish Super Red Bristlenose plecos of various sizes with another 50+ eggs hatching out and mine are mostly carnivore. They inhale freeze-dried tubifex worms, and shrimp pellets. They'll eat Soilent Green Repashy but I don't think they love it. They also love canned green beans. (I buy them the $0.50 cans at Walmart and they eat a full can a week and that's just giving them some every other day.) Algae wafers are largely a no go for them unless they're starving. I wouldn't worry about them getting constipated or having issues with the food. Your pleco would probably like the Wardley shrimp pellets. They're a nice cheap sinking food that my guys (and gals) devour. Freeze-dried Tubifex worms are a favorite of theirs also. Press them firmly against the glass and the plecos swarm them.

For anyone wondering what a brand new, just hatched Super Red Bristlenose Pleco looks like, here's a photo of the first of my fifty-ish (probably more) babies. I'm also including a photo of the breeding box with the somewhat algae covered piece of Anubias Nana Petite, the air stone and the rest of the as yet, unhatched eggs which should be hatching over the next day or two. The little guy is mostly clear, about a quarter of an inch long and about 70% yolk sac and 30% fish. He or she will be absorbing the yolk sac over the next few days then getting more free swimming and start looking for real food. The Anubias has enough algae and gunk on it to give them some nibbles between feedings and I'll be giving them lots of food options once the yolk sac is absorbed. (I've tried counting the eggs in the photos and while impossible to get an exact count, I'm pretty sure there are more than fifty.) So, we'll have to see how many survive, but my success rate with these guys/gals is typically pretty high.

I like the idea of putting a big air pump in my basement with a loop of PVC pipe around the basement with outlets leading upstairs. Small holes drilled in the floor/wall near tanks for air to arrive where needed. That would let me supply tanks in every room and the noise would be in the basement. To the best of my knowledge no one makes wall plates for air distribution (like for cable, electricity, or ethernet) but if the aquarium hobby took off, there could be a market for that. A wall plate with an airline nub and a control valve built-into the wall plate. Put one (or more) on every wall plumbed into a central air distribution system and you could have a pretty neat setup. Want a tank in a room? Simply run some airline from the nub to the tank and turn on the valve. Instant air. You could branch off 1/2" supply lines vertically from the main loop into the wall cavity and then use a 90 degree elbow to send it through the drywall/plaster. Cut the length of the piece from the elbow so that with an end cap it was flush with the finished wall surface then drill and tap in the air valve.

I like the idea of using the USB air pumps as an emergency filter using a power bank during power outages. I've never really trusted them as a full time air pump, but as an emergency or transport air pump they make some more sense. I may have to pick up a few. As for how many sponge filters in a 75 gallon tank, I'm an over-filtering kind of aquarist. More is better to me. I have at least two filters on every tank. Typically one sponge filter and either a HOB or canister. I just feel more comfortable with more filtration.

One more note, they'd be very unlikely to starve in an established tank. There are a ton of microorganism in most established tanks and a baby Cory doesn't need much to survive. Most likely something else ate them or they got sucked into a filter.

Removing the eggs is easier than catching the fry. When I see Cory eggs they're typically on my glass, so I use a razor blade to gently scrape them off and transfer them to a breeding box or net. If they've bred on a plant leaf I'll just snip off that leaf and move it to the box/net.

I've never had a problem with any brine shrimp eggs. They always hatch for me in decent numbers. I'd probably avoid the no-name ones on eBay, but companies like brineshrimpdirect.com, San Francisco Bay, and others have been fine for me. It's one item I'm not overly picky on the brand.

I've got Malaysian driftwood in one tank with them and some Wish driftwood (looks like grape vine) in another tank. Mine love green beans and Tubifex worms. I've tried them on Zucchini and cucumbers and they just ignore them. The same with algae wafers. I've tried several varieties with them and they'll eventually eat them, but they're not passionate about them. They also love shrimp pellets. First thing every morning the whole tank gets some flake food and I put shrimp pellets in each front corner and I've got plecos lining up in the corners for the shrimp pellets. In the afternoon the tanks get more flakes/frozen food and the freeze-dried Tubifex worm cubes (3 or 4 cubes depending on my mood) get pressed on the front glass. There are usually three or four plecos hanging out where the cubes go and as soon as the first one is pressed into place, they're swarming over it. They get so aggressive going after the cubes that they tend to knock them off the glass before they get to eat them all. I've tried them on Repashy, but they seem largely uninterested in it. I go through a full can of green beans a week with them and I could probably go through two or three if I kept dumping them in. They get the $0.50 cans of green beans from Walmart and they seem to love them. They're pretty neat fish. The nice thing is the babies eat what the adults eat. Once the yolk sacs are absorbed, they just chomp down whatever you feed the big guys/gals. They're arguably the easiest baby fish to feed. I'll just plop a green bean, a couple of shrimp pellets, and a small corner of a cube of Tubifex in and they'll be happy as can be and chomp away. They grow pretty quickly. My first batch from April are now sexually mature and starting to show signs of breeding. My biggest guys/gals are about three to four inches long now and they were maybe an inch or so long when I got them. They're a very impressive little pleco. Not great on algae though. I still have to scrape the glass despite there being about thirty plecos in my bigger tank. (I maybe feeding them too much stuff they like more than algae.)