Alot of questions...RO water?

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Hello there, im very new here but i have been keeping fish for 2yrs and a bit and i have a 10gal, 30gal and 50gal and a 5gal betta tank which i forgot to mention earlier when i introduced myself in the newb section. Im in the process of getting a new house and a new tank, 345gals, and i would like to breed some L no plecs in particular chocolate zebra plecs.
I've bred corys and livebearers alot throughout my fish keeping hobby, i know how to identify and treat practically every fish desease, i know about maintaining excellent water quality and testing for ammonia, nitrates, nitrites(which i do on a weekly basis), ph/gh/kh. I am doing to a project at current into improving the imune systems and genes of guppys, i breed fish not for money but for their own benefets and i always try to breed fish would good genes and health. I would basically like start to breed rare and unusual plecs to help raise their numbers and lower the needs in my lfs's(local fish store's) to import them from the wild and habitats already under pressure from other enviromental factors.
So after a freind recommend this forum to me for advice and info on unusual plecs, i came here to become more knolegable on these fish and help inprove my chances of becoming a successful plec breeder .
I have been recently introduced into the concepts of RO water and TDS and i would like to learn alot more about them and their uses as my knolege is pretty poor in this area of plec keeping.
Where do i start? I don't know, any info is much appreiciated

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Oh! i've just been reading through some posts, RO water does not sound very nesarsary to plec breeding, no? Which are harder to breed/more needy on water params- chocolate zebra plecs or zebra plecs?

[Shell231]

RO water from what i can understand is only really nessasary when you have extremly hard water, but you would have to ask someone a lot more knowledgable than me i am affraid!

365 gl WOW how big is that in ft? must be HUGE!

[smithrc]

its not just to do with the PH or KH though - it is used mainly to lower the TDS of the water - this is very ofter a trigger for spawning

[Shell231]

haha see i told u i had no clue! sorry for the info!

[Tokis-Phoenix]

What is considered too high a TDS reading for spawning chocolate zebra plecs? Do TDS requirement levels for spawning vary alot from plec tp plec? I did think though TDS had somthing to do with ph though although have i misread somthing somwhere? Sorry for all the questions!

ps: the new tank will be 6ft long, 4ft wide and 2ft high which will be 288 UK gallons and 345 US gallons .

Main questions 2: in my current tanks i have an assortment of 11 guppys, 2 common plecs(one 7inch, one 6inch) and 1 sailfin plec(5inch), 1 para plec, 2 mollys, 7 platys, 9 peppered/albino/panda corys, 1 armoured shrimp, 4 black khuli loachs, 3 apple snails, 3 giant ramshorn snails and a load of trumpet snails and 15 neon tetras spaced out between the tanks.
All of these fish apart from the betta and apple and ramshorn snails will be going into the new 345gal tank. I will be eventually adding an extra 29guppys, 3 mollys, 13 platys, 3 more para plecs (if i can get hold of them), 4 more of each type of cory i currently have plus maybe some new types, 6 hillsteam loachs, 3 clown loachs, 5 more armoured shrimp, 4 more khulis and another 10neons and perhaps another type of peaceful tetra and as many chocolate zebras plecs i can get hold of and some other small growing L number plecs..."phew"!
The 3 main enviroments in the tank will be 4 large bogwood piles making caves for my 3 large plecs to sleep in during the day, large heavily planted areas in the tank with fine white silica sand covering the bottom of the tank with big open spaces to make terotorial boundarys- i will be constructing large pebble, tunnel and rock piles where the current from the tank filter is strongest in the tank, im hoping these expanses of rock will make ideal breeding grounds for the chocolate zebras and perhaps other L number plecs and of course the hillstream loachs if they decide to.
Will the other non plec fish bother the chocolates too much for breeding or do they not mind other company? All the other fish in the tank are very peaceful fish, but i want to know wether such a large tank would make good breeding grounds for them or wether they would prefer a small tank? I want to avoid setting up separate small tanks as much as posible because it is going to be a large job maintaining the big tank and i need as much time on my hands to do it as posible, so if i can avoid setting up tons of other tanks i would be very happy.
With my current tanks, i am chucking away the 50gal because it has alot of chips around the top and isn't the safest of tanks, i will be turning my 30gal hex tank into a livebearer fry tank and the 10gal will be a quarentine tank, although i have a spare 20gal and 30gal tanks in particular that i might use instead.

What do you think of this plan?

[Tokis-Phoenix]

46 people looked at this thread and no one knows...?

[NeoCult]

if you want to breed them its best to set up a species only tank for them, they would feel much safer and your chances of sucess would be much more than in a community set up

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Thanks for the info, has anyone bred chocolate zebras in a community tank before? I just want to know if its posible?

[NeoCult]

i aint sure but id doubt it, im also sure if they did many young wouldnt survive, just my theory could be wrong....

[Tokis-Phoenix]

It would be an interesting project though to begin with though if it has not realy been attempted. The only fish that will be in the tank that will be any to threat and are known to eat fry are the khuli loachs and neons, but even so they are only capable of eating newly born livebearer sized fry which are about ---- long and from what i have gathered chocolate zebra plec fry live in the parents nest in their most vunerable stage, but i don't know how large they are when they start exploring so i dunno...The larger and more well planted the tank, the larger the frys survival chances are i suppose.
Will zebra plecs eat their own fry at all or all they purely scavenging fish?

[smithrc]

Tokis, Have you bread Bristle noses yet?

They are a great start (and will normally spawn in a community tank)
It'll get you used to the process and the fry sizes etc.

we lost fry to tetras, loaches and anything else that could catch the skitty little fry - we had to setup a breeding tank for them or we were getting half a dozen from a brood of 50+ make it through.

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Ok i will have a go at breeding bristlenoses, i'll keep the chocolate and other L number plecs in the main tank though until i am ready to breed them though .

[Shell231]

I probably read your huge post wrong but are u trying to breed everything in that tank, in the same tank? if u are what a feet that would be

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Livebearers are VERY easy to breed, they would breed even if there was a nucleor winter outside and living in a shark infested tank- you realy don't have to do a thing to make them breed apart from put 2-3females with a male. As to livebearers, the main important thing with them is to make sure they don't inbred with each other as they'll readily do that given a moments chance, and to also make sure you produce good quality healthy fry of course.
So i basically let them get on with their own thing and introduce new blood to the gene pool every now and then.
I've never owned hillstream loachs before, but i was talking to a friend the other day and apparently they are reletavely easy to breed and are on the same difficulty level as bristlenoses and if they are a good first plec to breed then hillstream loachs shouldn't be too much of a problem.

So apart from the chocolate zebras and newly decided bristlenoses, its just the hillstream loachs at the mo. If the other fish want to breed thats fine with me but i won't be making them do it deliberatly or nothing, my corys pretty much spawn when they want to and when they do i just collect the eggs up and raise them in a safe place and thats that .