Gastromyzon (Borneo Loach) Progress

[Epiphanaea]

I think I may have eggs.  I also seem to have lost two adults - two of the larger, so they could have just been old.  I found one body - the other is just gone, so I suppose she could still turn up, but not looking good.  

But, back to the more cheerful part - I’ve found ~1.5mm cranberry-colored semi-translucent little orbs, and some smaller.  I think these may be left over from the brood of pseudogastromyzon, the ones that didn’t hatch.  I’ve found a few that were an opaque cherry-chapstick pink, which I think are the same, but plus fungus.  Only a couple of those.

I did a pretty thorough gravel-vacuuming yesterday, moved the big river rocks and all, which I’d been avoiding.  I have apparently been over feeding because there was a LOT of detritus that looked more like food that poop.  So that may be what induced breeding, but might also be what killed the one adult, if there was a pocket of bad water under a rock. 
 

This morning I came down and one of the gastromyzon scitulus was in the middle of the tank, clinging to a thumbnail-size piece of gravel (amidst smaller gravel), fluttering and looking distressed.  So I reached in to see what was up - he actually let me touch him before giving up the rock, which is not typical for this fish.  So he darted off when I picked up the rock - under which was a loose scattering of ~0.5mm white, round specks, that I believe may have been eggs!

He (I assume?) went back to the rock after a couple minutes, but only stayed for maybe 10m longer.

So, we’ll see!  Will the tiny white eggs turn into bigger red eggs?  Are those still going to hatch?  TBC!

 

(Also how is it that when I was looking to buy these fish no store could find them anywhere, but now that I have 20+ pseudogastromyzon babies, nobody is interested?)

Edited May 28 by Epiphanaea

[Jovius]

That's awesome! I'd love it if you posted some pics and kept us updated!

[Markp2483]

Those are some of my favorite fish. Would love to see people having success breeding them.  I’ve had good luck with the regular reticulated hill streams would love to give the Borneo’s a try in a breeding setup. I love how their noses squish down when they are feeding and have very different behavior from retics and much more passive of an inhabitant in the tank.