Blue eyed lemon bristlenose plecos

[Odd Duck]

My 100 G nanofish tank has been an absolute hot mess for a while.  I got lazy and let BBA overrun the tank due to other things happening in my life besides fish.  I’ve been working much harder at getting caught up on things by doing larger and more frequent water changes along with keeping up better with plant maintenance, removing spent and dying leaves, etc.  The BBA status is improving and the BELBN plecos are going wild.  The cories have been breeding like mad.  It’s a hot bed of fishy frenzy right now.

The big boys have been sparring and have the substrate (sand over a thin clay bottom) all stirred up and the water is very cloudy but parameters are great.  The long fin females have been very interested and hanging around the caves, clearly ready to spawn. The boys are all over the place.  Last night I got off at a decent hour for a change, the lights were off, and I decided to check on the plecos.  There was definitely a female in the cave with a male!  Today when the lights came on, all of them were either in the favorite cave or around it.  I didn’t move fast enough to get the pic of one big boy in front of the cave with the 2 females on the wood over the cave and the second big boy in the cave.  I can’t see if there are eggs in the cave but there were some eggs kicked out of the cave.

The eggs are now in a breeder net that’s directly in front of a good HOB current.  There are chunks of IAL and a mulberry leaf in the breeder net and a few very small, immature neo shrimp for “baby sitters” in with the eggs that were loose.

There is a female in the cave again as I’m typing and the boy is in backwards, presumably fertilizing more eggs.  Next pic is loose eggs that were collected and are now in the breeder box, one boy in and one boy out of the cave, and the entire group hanging about the cave with only the tail visible for the male in the cave.  Even the youngsters from the last clutch are hanging around the area but I couldn’t get a decent pic of that.

The precious clutch are doing well in their new digs (only a few were left in the cave in this tank for daddy to tend) but I’m not sure yet if they are going to be long finned.  I thought one of the long finned females was the momma, but I don’t see much length on their fins yet.  Now I only have long finned females in this tank so I should get only long finned babies.  I’ll be watching like a hawk over the next 5-7 days to see when the first fry is visible (assuming everything goes well).  The fry will get pulled as soon as they’re close to coming out of the cave since I have fish in this tank that might eat fry, so they’ll get pulled in about 10-12 days from today.

 

[Guppysnail]

Congratulations!  
If these are genetics from the ones you got from me there will be a mix. Long fin trait does not breed true. 
 

My mom and dads offspring as well as offspring from their kids usually run:

50% long fin, 35% extra long fin (hyper, exaggerated, veil choose your adjective) and 15% short fin. 
 

A few in that mix will have long pectorals with extra long tails. 
 

Congratulations again 🎉

[Odd Duck]

On 10/3/2023 at 11:35 AM, Guppysnail said:

Congratulations!  
If these are genetics from the ones you got from me there will be a mix. Long fin trait does not breed true. 
 

My mom and dads offspring as well as offspring from their kids usually run:

50% long fin, 35% extra long fin (hyper, exaggerated, veil choose your adjective) and 15% short fin. 
 

A few in that mix will have long pectorals with extra long tails. 
 

Congratulations again 🎉

That’s interesting considering most of the reading I’ve done says long fin is dominant in BN’s.  I’m honestly not 100% certain if these were your girls or not.  I’ve added 5 LF girls to this tank over time and these are the 2 that are still with me.  This tank kind of just swallows fish a bit since it’s so heavily planted anybody that passes I don’t ever see them sick and rarely find bodies.  They hide, then they’re gone.  I occasionally see female bronzes that are a bit roughed up after intense breeding but they always heal up fine.  My parameters are never off since the tank is so over filtered, planted, and lightly stocked for its size.

[Guppysnail]

On 10/3/2023 at 12:56 PM, Odd Duck said:

most of the reading I’ve done says long fin is dominant

I’m guessing it is dominant since most are long fin. I’m guessing both mom n dad as well as Angel and Lefty each still had the shortfin gene that’s why I get a few short fin each batch 🤷‍♀️. Genetics are not my strong suit by any stretch of the imagination 

[Odd Duck]

On 10/3/2023 at 12:39 PM, Guppysnail said:

I’m guessing it is dominant since most are long fin. I’m guessing both mom n dad as well as Angel and Lefty each still had the shortfin gene that’s why I get a few short fin each batch 🤷‍♀️. Genetics are not my strong suit by any stretch of the imagination 

Yes, you’re right. I jumped in the shower to get ready for work right after I posted and I realized they both had to be heterozygous for short fins.  So the super long fins are likely a double up on the long fin gene, “regular” long fin is het for the LF gene, and short fins are homozygous for the “normal” recessive gene.

I definitely have eggs in the cave now!  Checked again right before I left for work and there’s a nice big blob of eggs easily visible now.  So I’ve got a few eggs in the breeder net that I don’t know for certain if they’re fertilized or not, but I think they are.  We’ll see soon enough if they hatch or fungus.

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Odd Duck
Typo

[Guppysnail]

On 10/3/2023 at 3:25 PM, Odd Duck said:

Yes, you’re right. I jumped in the shower to get ready for work right after I posted and I realized they both had to be heterozygous for short fins.  So the super long fins are likely a double up on the long fin gene, “regular” long fin is het for the LF gene, and short fins are homozygous for the “normal” recessive gene.

I definitely have eggs in the cave now!  Checked again right before I left for work and there’s a nice big blob of eggs easily visible now.  So I’ve got a few eggs in the breeder net that I don’t know for certain if they’re fertilized or not, but I think they are.  We’ll see soon enough if they hatch or fungus.

 

Now I know my nights reading project will be a dictionary to decode this.  Does it come with a decoder ring? 🤗 🤣

[Odd Duck]

On 10/3/2023 at 2:54 PM, Guppysnail said:

Now I know my nights reading project will be a dictionary to decode this.  Does it come with a decoder ring? 🤗 🤣

Decoder follows - brace yourself because it’s long.  I figure if you don’t know @Guppysnail, then many others won’t either.  I’m going to go back to the basics of genetics.  Hetero means “different” or “other”, homo means “same”.

So Heterozygous means the individual carries 2 different genes (usually one dominant and one recessive) vs 2 versions of the same gene (both dominant or both recessive).  So your lovely angel-winged, extra frilly BELBN (blue-eyed lemon bristlenose = BELBN) likely have 2 versions of the long fin gene meaning they are Homozygous for long fin. I suspect this means they express long fin even more exuberantly than “standard” long fin.  The short fins are Homozygous - they have the same gene on each chromosome pair for the short fin gene.

When you mix and match an individual that is heterozygous they have the potential to contribute one of each type of gene to their offspring.  So one baby may get the short fin gene and one baby may get the long fin gene.   Sex cells - whether sperm or egg - have only half the normal number of chromosomes so only one version of each chromosome makes it to each baby from each parent and the baby then has normal chromosome pairs.

When each parent can contribute one trait (this is very oversimplified since we’re only talking about a single, specific trait here), then we get fairly strict rules on what the babies can show or express from their genes.

if we were to cross a short fin male with a pure long fin female, we would get all long fin offspring since long fin is dominant.  Mom gives only long fin genes, Dad gives only short fin genes.  These babies would all be heterozygous for long fin (and short fin).

Crossing these babies will give you a mix like your kids show.  I’m going to draw a Punnit Square for example and link the pic.

The top example is an extra frilly long fin Mom (I’m making the assumption she is homozygous for long fin = LL).  It is standard to use the capital letter for the dominant gene and the small letter for the recessive gene.  Dad is short fin and since we know this is recessive, we know he is homozygous for the short fin gene = ll (hard to tell with this font but that’s 2 small “L’s”).

You can see that each individual can contribute only one characteristic. You get one type of offspring on the first mix - all “regular” long fins because they are heterozygous = Ll.  They have one gene for each characteristic.

When you cross the offspring from that mix, bottom example, you get all mixed but in fairly set proportions.  Typical would be 25% = LL that will eventually end up frilly, 50% “standard” long fin = Ll, and 25% short fin = ll.  Variations from that in any particular clutch may be somewhat random or there could be a health issue linked with the homozygous gene.

Now the COLOR on bristlenose plecos is a COMPLETELY different scenario and I don’t think anybody has them completely figured out because each color seems to have a different location for the gene and they may have incomplete dominance or expression in how the different genes interact to show the color of the fish.

I don’t know if this helps or is too complicated.  It’s a . . . . .  not excessively busy day in the ER (don’t want to jinx it!).  I may or may not be available to answer questions later tonight but will be available off and on for the rest of the week.

[Guppysnail]

This is fabulous. Thank you for taking the time to explain in such detail. I remember the capital letters and small, dominant and recessive and that chart looks vaguely familiar from some fly explanation in a high school biology class. 🤣

I do appreciate the explanation. It makes a lot more sense now. 
 

I love how much I learn from great members on this forum. 🤗

[Odd Duck]

Well, eggs are missing.  So he must have gotten so agitated that he wasn’t tending properly, or someone else got in there, or something but they’re gone without a trace.   The other male has made a big wallow underneath the left hand driftwood piece so the deep clay layer is stirred up again.  🤦🏻‍♀️  The tank has looked dirty since last week, now with no signs of clearing since they keep stirring up the substrate.  Note to self, no dirt layer with bristlenose pleco males.  🤦🏻‍♀️ 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

I suspect this is not the daddy from the first clutch as he stayed tight in the cave the whole time.  This guy has been guarding only loosely.  It might be because he was getting harassed and challenged by the other male, but it hasn’t worked out well for the eggs.  I’ll know in a few more days if the small group of eggs that initially got kicked out of the cave are going to hatch in their breeder net.

I might have to put the little cave back in on the left end to see if the original male will move over there and leave this male alone.  I can’t tell these boys apart since I almost never see them side by side and when I do see them together they are gently scuffling so I can’t do a good comparison.  I thought for a long time I only had one mature male in here.  It’s only recently that I’ve been seeing both at the same time.  They’re the same size, same color, nothing so far distinguishes them.  Oooh, I have head shots, potentially of each but could also be the same male.  I need to compare them and see if there’s a quick way to tell them apart or if it’s going to take a very close look to tell them apart.  I’ll take all the comparison help I can get.  These are the best head shots I,have and I don’t know if they are of each, or the same, male.

 

Now my mission is to get head shots of each the same day to see if I can learn to tell them apart.

[Odd Duck]

One of my BEL guys has apparently decided to dig for the Earth’s core.  I told him this is NOT a Jules Verne story!  He ignored me and kept digging.  He’s wallowed so much he finished filling in his previous spot but his new spot is down to clay again!

Between the clown pleco hollowing out and enlarging his favorite cave (wood gnawer), and this dude digging under that same piece of wood, they have it tilting forward by about 5” at the top!  Don’t worry, he won’t get smushed.

First pic is one end of him - see the eyeball?  Second pic is the other end see the yellow streak up against the wood?  That’s his tail with one of the babies right beside him.  That’s Crypt. pontederiifolia and Crypt. wendtii ‘Red’ corm and roots all exposed, by the way.  🤦🏻‍♀️  I guess he needed more iron in his diet.  😆 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

 

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Odd Duck
Autocorrect - frugal? In place of wallowed? Really?

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Best laid plans undone by an overzealous BN! Dirted tanks are amazing until they aren’t. I’ve been seeing plenty of mulm in my dirted 60 and between the L397s and their wood needs and all the other inhabits well here’s the MULM! Hopefully we can keep the dirt in place. 

Thanks for genetics refresher we can all use it and just love the ancistrus content!! 

[Odd Duck]

On 10/6/2023 at 11:32 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

Best laid plans undone by an overzealous BN! Dirted tanks are amazing until they aren’t. I’ve been seeing plenty of mulm in my dirted 60 and between the L397s and their wood needs and all the other inhabits well here’s the MULM! Hopefully we can keep the dirt in place. 

Thanks for genetics refresher we can all use it and just love the ancistrus content!! 

Yep, 2.5 years of me being the only one to disrupt the layers when I moved plants around.  And now this hot mess!  I never had more than a few seconds of clouding with a little puff of clay from pulling out a deep rooted plant.  Now I look at my tank and see puffs every few hours (so I know it’s happening when I’m not watching, too), and it’s constantly varying degrees of cloudy.  It clears (well, decreases) for a bit, then clouds back up again.  I don’t know what it’s going to look like from one minute to the next!  Crazy boys!

 

[Odd Duck]

Well, the eggs that were kicked out of the cave have hatched and I didn’t even realize it!  The last time I checked on them they looked funguses and I stopped checking.  I left them in the breeder net just in case any did hatch and have only glanced in the net while I was doing other projects.  Tonight I was fiddling with that tank because I put a tiny pump on the intake of the Fluval HOB breeder box.  While I was watching to see if the flow looked right I checked the breeder net that’s inside this tank and saw one egg I thought was fungused move!  On closer look with a flashlight, I’ve got at least 5 little guys that would be coming out of the cave in about 3 days or so in there.  I did have some IAL leaf pieces and a mulberry leaf they could have eaten on if they were so inclined but they haven’t quite finished resorbing their yolk sacs yet.  Maybe another 24-36 hours.  I put the tiniest speck of paste food in there just in case, fed the other babies, and I’m going to bed.  Gotta get up in 4 hours for another 12 hour shift taking the day shift covering for another doc.  At least I got some babies out of this clutch!