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Anyone breeding L146 plecos


JoshStover
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I've spawned and raised fry for these in the past. Providing them good caves (I'll get into this in a bit), good food, flow, cooler water and dithers seemed to be the key.

When I first tried these I had been told that your standard pleco caves would work. Boy was that far from it. If you take a look at the body of these guys you will notice they are more flat and streamlined, the reason for this is that they live in fast moving and highly oxygenated water. The spawning setup that worked for me were stacked slate with spaces. The slate should get some flow in the spaces, but nothing like the current I used in the tank. Added a branch of mopani so that they could perch in the water stream if they wanted to (which the females tended to do.) What I did was I ran two Aquaclear powerheads with the prefilters and replaced one of the fine foam prefilters with your bulk dual ply blue and white filter material. The tank I used was a 20 long with the power heads on one side of the tank flowing to the other. Just because it was there, I made sure to run the venturies close to 100% open to provide additional oxygen, and I also ran an airstone bar on the back wall at the bottom on the same side as the powerheads for additional agitation. Tank had a heater, but I had it set to 72, and the room it was in got no warmer than 75.

At that point I started to see males (had 2 males and 3 females) guarding gaps in the slate. Females were not putting on weight to show they had eggs, so I moved away from prepared pellet and wafer foods to live blackworms twice daily, frozen blood worms once weekly replacing one blackworm meal (to make sure to not bloat the pleco's with them) and fed raw zucchini every other day as well. When it came to feeding them the worms (live or frozen) I would kill the power heads for about 30 mins so they would have a chance to get the food at the bottom without it being blasted everywhere. Water changes were done weekly at 50% and I left the pumps running while I changed the water. I aimed to have the new water around 70 when it went into the tank, but that never was 100% the case. 

In the case of dithers, I can't remember exactly what I had. It was either Cherry Barbs or some Praecox Rainbows. You need to have something that will be content with high current in the upper portion of the tank. Without the dithers, the Pleco's constantly hid and females were cramming themselves into the caves for cover. 

Once the they spawned I tried to let the Dad take care of the eggs. The issue I ran into was that sometimes the males would abandon the clutch of eggs to eat, and once they got back either the other male or another female who was ready to breed would polish off the previous eggs. What I ended up doing was pulling the eggs with a siphon and gently nudging them off the rock (as to not have to take apart the rock structure) and putting them in a DIY tumbler. IME the eggs were resilient and didn't seem to get issues with fungus, so MB wasn't needed, but they needed to have the flow to replicate being fanned by the father. Clutches for me were small around 15-20, though I've read some females providing up to around 50+ eggs. Difference being is that I had younger stock.

Babies post hatch were moved to a rearing tank. Tank was a 5.5 with a cycles sponge filter running at a medium rate, a small piece of seasoned/soaked wood, and a heater set to 78. Babies took to BBS almost immediately no matter how much of a yolk sac they had. I fed the rinsed BBS with a pipette to the cluster of babies that would gather in a corner of the tank prior to them being 100% free swimming. Once free swimming they still went after BBS, but mainly devoured the zucchini and seemed to be rasping on the small piece of driftwood they would hid on/under. After about a week post free swimming I had mixed results with the fry. Some clutches were fine and I got them to subadult size before letting them go. Others would have random dieoffs that were unexplainable, one day they would be fine, next 1/3 of the fry would be dead. I toyed with cooler water, different foods (other veggies and prepared pellets) and nothing seemed to change. I would assume it had something to do with a dominant fry preying on its siblings, but I never was able to witness food aggression or predation first hand. 

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On 9/6/2021 at 7:49 PM, Tihshho said:

I've spawned and raised fry for these in the past. Providing them good caves (I'll get into this in a bit), good food, flow, cooler water and dithers seemed to be the key.

When I first tried these I had been told that your standard pleco caves would work. Boy was that far from it. If you take a look at the body of these guys you will notice they are more flat and streamlined, the reason for this is that they live in fast moving and highly oxygenated water. The spawning setup that worked for me were stacked slate with spaces. The slate should get some flow in the spaces, but nothing like the current I used in the tank. Added a branch of mopani so that they could perch in the water stream if they wanted to (which the females tended to do.) What I did was I ran two Aquaclear powerheads with the prefilters and replaced one of the fine foam prefilters with your bulk dual ply blue and white filter material. The tank I used was a 20 long with the power heads on one side of the tank flowing to the other. Just because it was there, I made sure to run the venturies close to 100% open to provide additional oxygen, and I also ran an airstone bar on the back wall at the bottom on the same side as the powerheads for additional agitation. Tank had a heater, but I had it set to 72, and the room it was in got no warmer than 75.

At that point I started to see males (had 2 males and 3 females) guarding gaps in the slate. Females were not putting on weight to show they had eggs, so I moved away from prepared pellet and wafer foods to live blackworms twice daily, frozen blood worms once weekly replacing one blackworm meal (to make sure to not bloat the pleco's with them) and fed raw zucchini every other day as well. When it came to feeding them the worms (live or frozen) I would kill the power heads for about 30 mins so they would have a chance to get the food at the bottom without it being blasted everywhere. Water changes were done weekly at 50% and I left the pumps running while I changed the water. I aimed to have the new water around 70 when it went into the tank, but that never was 100% the case. 

In the case of dithers, I can't remember exactly what I had. It was either Cherry Barbs or some Praecox Rainbows. You need to have something that will be content with high current in the upper portion of the tank. Without the dithers, the Pleco's constantly hid and females were cramming themselves into the caves for cover. 

Once the they spawned I tried to let the Dad take care of the eggs. The issue I ran into was that sometimes the males would abandon the clutch of eggs to eat, and once they got back either the other male or another female who was ready to breed would polish off the previous eggs. What I ended up doing was pulling the eggs with a siphon and gently nudging them off the rock (as to not have to take apart the rock structure) and putting them in a DIY tumbler. IME the eggs were resilient and didn't seem to get issues with fungus, so MB wasn't needed, but they needed to have the flow to replicate being fanned by the father. Clutches for me were small around 15-20, though I've read some females providing up to around 50+ eggs. Difference being is that I had younger stock.

Babies post hatch were moved to a rearing tank. Tank was a 5.5 with a cycles sponge filter running at a medium rate, a small piece of seasoned/soaked wood, and a heater set to 78. Babies took to BBS almost immediately no matter how much of a yolk sac they had. I fed the rinsed BBS with a pipette to the cluster of babies that would gather in a corner of the tank prior to them being 100% free swimming. Once free swimming they still went after BBS, but mainly devoured the zucchini and seemed to be rasping on the small piece of driftwood they would hid on/under. After about a week post free swimming I had mixed results with the fry. Some clutches were fine and I got them to subadult size before letting them go. Others would have random dieoffs that were unexplainable, one day they would be fine, next 1/3 of the fry would be dead. I toyed with cooler water, different foods (other veggies and prepared pellets) and nothing seemed to change. I would assume it had something to do with a dominant fry preying on its siblings, but I never was able to witness food aggression or predation first hand. 

^this is awesome^ 

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On 9/6/2021 at 6:49 PM, Tihshho said:

I've spawned and raised fry for these in the past. Providing them good caves (I'll get into this in a bit), good food, flow, cooler water and dithers seemed to be the key.

When I first tried these I had been told that your standard pleco caves would work. Boy was that far from it. If you take a look at the body of these guys you will notice they are more flat and streamlined, the reason for this is that they live in fast moving and highly oxygenated water. The spawning setup that worked for me were stacked slate with spaces. The slate should get some flow in the spaces, but nothing like the current I used in the tank. Added a branch of mopani so that they could perch in the water stream if they wanted to (which the females tended to do.) What I did was I ran two Aquaclear powerheads with the prefilters and replaced one of the fine foam prefilters with your bulk dual ply blue and white filter material. The tank I used was a 20 long with the power heads on one side of the tank flowing to the other. Just because it was there, I made sure to run the venturies close to 100% open to provide additional oxygen, and I also ran an airstone bar on the back wall at the bottom on the same side as the powerheads for additional agitation. Tank had a heater, but I had it set to 72, and the room it was in got no warmer than 75.

At that point I started to see males (had 2 males and 3 females) guarding gaps in the slate. Females were not putting on weight to show they had eggs, so I moved away from prepared pellet and wafer foods to live blackworms twice daily, frozen blood worms once weekly replacing one blackworm meal (to make sure to not bloat the pleco's with them) and fed raw zucchini every other day as well. When it came to feeding them the worms (live or frozen) I would kill the power heads for about 30 mins so they would have a chance to get the food at the bottom without it being blasted everywhere. Water changes were done weekly at 50% and I left the pumps running while I changed the water. I aimed to have the new water around 70 when it went into the tank, but that never was 100% the case. 

In the case of dithers, I can't remember exactly what I had. It was either Cherry Barbs or some Praecox Rainbows. You need to have something that will be content with high current in the upper portion of the tank. Without the dithers, the Pleco's constantly hid and females were cramming themselves into the caves for cover. 

Once the they spawned I tried to let the Dad take care of the eggs. The issue I ran into was that sometimes the males would abandon the clutch of eggs to eat, and once they got back either the other male or another female who was ready to breed would polish off the previous eggs. What I ended up doing was pulling the eggs with a siphon and gently nudging them off the rock (as to not have to take apart the rock structure) and putting them in a DIY tumbler. IME the eggs were resilient and didn't seem to get issues with fungus, so MB wasn't needed, but they needed to have the flow to replicate being fanned by the father. Clutches for me were small around 15-20, though I've read some females providing up to around 50+ eggs. Difference being is that I had younger stock.

Babies post hatch were moved to a rearing tank. Tank was a 5.5 with a cycles sponge filter running at a medium rate, a small piece of seasoned/soaked wood, and a heater set to 78. Babies took to BBS almost immediately no matter how much of a yolk sac they had. I fed the rinsed BBS with a pipette to the cluster of babies that would gather in a corner of the tank prior to them being 100% free swimming. Once free swimming they still went after BBS, but mainly devoured the zucchini and seemed to be rasping on the small piece of driftwood they would hid on/under. After about a week post free swimming I had mixed results with the fry. Some clutches were fine and I got them to subadult size before letting them go. Others would have random dieoffs that were unexplainable, one day they would be fine, next 1/3 of the fry would be dead. I toyed with cooler water, different foods (other veggies and prepared pellets) and nothing seemed to change. I would assume it had something to do with a dominant fry preying on its siblings, but I never was able to witness food aggression or predation first hand. 

Solid info!  Thanks for sharing!

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