How to care for and how to breed bristlenose plecos?

[Yanni]

Hi everybody! I have seen some lemon blue eyed bristlenose pleco babies and was considering to get them. The person selling them was going to sell 13 of them. I currently have two 20 gallon tanks and one 10 gallon tank. Would I be able to separate them around in those tanks? Also, what are your setups for them? I want to know how you guys breed and keep them. Would any other tank mates be suitable to keep with them if I'm trying to breed them? What should I feed them to get them to be happy and growing? Sorry for the many questions, but if you have any advice at all, I'd appreciate it. Thank you!

[Colu]

I just put a lot of caves in my planted tank and and they get on with it I recommend 1 male to 2 females  the males can get territorial if there are to many in the tank

Edited February 6, 2021 by Colu

[FrozenFins]

I have a brsitlenose pleco in a 40 gallon, with a cave for her to hide in. I have never attempted to breed bristlenose plecos, but... Cory has a video for that, and If you watch some of the dean fish room tours I know they talk a little about breeding plecos.

 

[Levi_Aquatics]

Just put a male and a female in a 20 gallon or larger and give them some caves and good food like algae and keep the water parameters good and they should breed for you.

[gardenman]

Feeding them is the big key to me. Mine love freeze-dried tubifex worms, green beans, shrimp pellets and more. Males will claim a cave and try to woo a female. If the female approves she'll go in, lay her eggs and the male will fan them and care for them. They're easy to breed. Fry eat what the parents do so they're easy to raise. They're neat fish.

[Struggle]

13 hours ago, Yanni said:

Hi everybody! I have seen some lemon blue eyed bristlenose pleco babies and was considering to get them. The person selling them was going to sell 13 of them. I currently have two 20 gallon tanks and one 10 gallon tank. Would I be able to separate them around in those tanks? Also, what are your setups for them? I want to know how you guys breed and keep them. Would any other tank mates be suitable to keep with them if I'm trying to breed them? What should I feed them to get them to be happy and growing? Sorry for the many questions, but if you have any advice at all, I'd appreciate it. Thank you!

Hi Yanni,

Yes you can separate them around those three tanks if you want all of them. When they mature you may have to separate or trade in the males due to aggression. Just make sure that you keep them fed well.
 

I spawn my bristlenose plecos in 20G talls right now but I’m seriously thinking about moving them back to 10Gs. It seems like I had better luck with the parents in 10G aquariums for some reason.

My setups are mainly for breeding so tank mates are minimal. I do keep  neocaridina shrimp and snails in my bristlenose aquariums. I will sometimes grow out killifish fry as well since they stay at the top of the aquarium for the most part. My aquariums all have sand wood and are planted. I haven’t used heaters on my bristlenose aquariums but I’m thinking I will start on my fry grow outs to get them to put on size a little faster. My water temperature runs anywhere from 72-78 depending on the season. I’ve tried rectangular breeding caves and the plant watering spikes so far and my fish prefer the plant watering spikes. I use air driven HMF (sponge filters) on all of my aquariums, I’ve used all different kinds of filters and I always come back to air driven sponge filters. 

Feeding wise, they get everything in the book but their mainstay is a mixture Repashy (with redrum) green beans and zucchini. I try and have a few chunks of repashy for them to munch on most of the time and supplement with other foods. They will also get a supplementation of BBS, blood worms, brine shrimp, xtreme flake, xtreme pellets, bug bites, algae wafers, shrimp pellets and anything else in the fish room.

Here recently I’ve been thinking that I may have a calcium deficiency due to all of the snails from the heavy feeding so I supplement calcium and/or wonder shells. The snail shells in the tank I’m supplementing seem to be thinner than normal. The fry have gone over and munched on the calcium so I may be on to something or not, who knows. We have so many snails that we ended up getting a few puffers because of my great ability to breed these wonderful snails 😀

I wish you luck with your future breeding project!!!