Everything you ever wanted to say about "Zebra luvin", but didn't because you thought everyone would take the mickey! Plus general topics for discussion including everything from what you feed them to your personal experiences.
he's also hanging out at the door now, like he'd like her to come visit again
It sounds like a lot of you understand Zebra spawning behavior. How do you know they are ready to spawn, or that they even like each other? My male is always half hanging out of his cave, does this mean "he'd like her to come visit"? I didn't know this was part of the spawning thing. Are there any other signs? Are the females supposed to want to hang out at the cave entrance? I just did a big water change and am hoping to do a rainy season right now. I had 2 caves. The males always in his, and then my only big female went in the other. I heard you don't want to give the female a cave or she won't go into the males' cave, so I took hers away. If I knew more about Zebra spawning, maybe there is a lot more I can do. You are all giving excellent cave advice, but I am just a bit curious on what is going on in their heads. For example, does a female have to be "gravid" to get a spawn? How big does she need to be? Should she be forced to live caveless? What is the best "rainy season" temp? Oh, I sound like such an amateur...uh, I am.
I am convinced that it's not just the drop in temp, but also a drop in TDS of the water that stimulates the spawning. I know it definitely takes that change for the L260, although less is required once they get it figured out at least. I've now spawned 8 species of plecos, and the hanging half out the door way shaking their little hubba hubba fins at the females is a sure sign that the male is advertising for a girlfriend.
While I don't give my females caves, I DO occasionally move everything around in their houses if they aren't spawning. It makes them argue and struggle for new territories and can make the females more anxious to get into the cave with the male. I also tend to lay bogwood along the top of the males cave for the dominant females to use. That way they have to stay near and watch him trying to entice them more often. No idea if it works, but they're spawning in spite of me screwing with them, so who knows?
I keep the tank temp at 86F and then lower it 8 degrees or so with cold RO water when I'm doing a rainy season.
Wow...Thanks a lot for all the extra info. You really cleared a few things up for me. I first heard of the TDS thing from you in another post. I did replace about 1/3 of the new water with R/O water...my R/O tank is very small.
I think my male is looking for a girlfriend because he is ALWAYS half hanging out of the cave....in this tank anyway. I remember before I moved him from another tank, he was all the way in. There are 4 other small females (too immature) with this pair, but they do not seem to be a hindrance to the bigger femaler or the male, so I let them stay. My temp was 85 before I did the water change today, and now it is 77. I was going to leave it at 77 for a few days. Is this idea ok? This is my first rainy season attempt. Or am I supposed to slowly raise the temp? Over how many days? Ow, sorry I ask so many questions, I think I should pay you guys for advice.
(You'd make a fortune!) he he
You want the heaters turned on to raise the temperature back up to 85 as fast as it can. Just lower the temp with the water changes, but leave the heaters in place. If you keep doing it daily, they get that fluctuation they'd get as the sun came out and warmed things up, then rained again the next morning. At least that's my understanding of how it works!
Mind you, my zebras have been much more independant of my control than the L260 were. They just sort of spawn when they dang well please.
Total Dissolved Solids. Basically a drop in hardness is the trigger that seems to make the most difference, at least with my fish.
My tap water is 270ppm, give or take a bit, and I drop the tank down to as little as 120ppm with RO water over the one week stimulation when I'm trying to get a spawn.
ok thanks I was wondering if it had to do with the PH, as my first spawn was induced after the water supplier suddenly dropped the PH to 5 (!), and I didn't find out until the next day.
There was signs of mass hysteria amongst aquarium keepers in Oslo at that time, before we figured out what had happened but it seemed to have had a good effect on my zebras... mind you, it might have been a mere coincidence also.
Lots of people lost fish during those first days ..
I tend to do a water change every 3 to 4 days, about 50% and it's half RO water and half tap water. What I've been doing for the last couple of months is use 100% RO water + RO right every fortnight. Is this any good?
Sounds like I should invest in a TDS meter if this is a major factor in breeding zebras.
Adam, if it was me, I'd do tap water changes (my pH is 7.8 out of the tap and I know of at least 3 people breeding zebras in higher). Reduce the amount you change to 20% or so for a few weeks, then do daily, large volume changes with cold RO water for a week. I did this for literally months (8 to be exact) with my zebras and it didn't do anything. I moved them into a larger tank, lowered the heat a couple degrees (from 88 to 86), did one big RO change just before I left to get married and POOF, they spawned. I haven't a clue if one day was enough trigger, if they liked the new digs, or what the heck happened, but it did work.
The L260 I've had enough practice with to know now that it IS a shift in TDS. I've had them spawn when I was trying to RAISE the TDS enough (my tap water got very soft here over the summer, of course, because I'd finally invested in a RO unit!). I did a large volume tap water change and they spawned. I tried for 10 weeks to induce a spawn with just tap water rainy seasons though and had zero luck. 3 days of RO rainy season and they spawned immediately like they'd been holding out. Hypancistrus usually spawn once you stop doing the changes, IME, and ancistrus usually go after just a few days, long before you get in a week of changes.
The TDS meter is the only one I own. I don't modify the pH in any tank in the house but the one with my L183 that I had such a terrible time getting fry to survive from. My discus even live in my tap water. Shhhh, don't tell anyone!
I know what to do now, I think I'll put them on the same sort of water management regime you have your zebras on. I guess your system is tried and tested as you have had a few spawns now. I can see that I am changing too much water and too often as a result the TDS will not build up sufficiently prior to a water change.
Have you managed to breed your discus in tap water?
I find these observations rather interesting. I have very soft water in my tap, and I like Barbie did heavy water changes in periods over a year, with no result. Then our water supplier changed the PH, and my Zebras spawned within days.
This makes me wonder if it's the change in the water chemistry, wether it be hardness or PH that will trigger spawns in Zebras.... That it might be the change from the normal that would be the trigger in other words, since I haven't done anything with the hardness in the water with mine.
Adam I just got discus again a month or so again. I've moved around so much for the last few years, I've had to sell my discus just abouut the time they got adult sized every time. This time I'm keeping them til they die of old age! They've grown from 2.5" to almost 4 already, and they seem to be great quality. I'll know more when I get them in a tank where there's traffic around them. For growout, I put them in the tank with my "spare" zebra pair (way too small for breeding) and my adult and subadult L260's. It was a great idea, other than the fact that it's in the far back corner of my basement so they went from brave and fighting over food, to afraid of people again. Once they get a bit larger, I'll need to move them anyway, so they'll come up into my office where I can see them.
Discus eggs are terribly sensitive to harder water, so I'd assume I'll need to use RO to have much of a hatch rate. I was told a TDS under 100ppm was essential, and to date, I haven't had any problem maintaining that in the L183 without pH crashes, so hopefully I'll have as much luck with the discus
I would definitely think the "changes" are the trigger McEve. Constant consistent parameters seem to make the fish just hold out, and drops and sudden raising of the pH and hardness make them spawn. Whether it's out of fear they're going to need to perpetuate their species, or just in response to the stimuli they get in nature, I don't know. I just know it's what worked for me. Larry Vires helped me get my L260 going, and said that he's helped numerous people with their fish that didn't have nearly the luck I did, just because I was willing to really push the TDS and temperature I guess.
Then again, 8 months of all the dry seasons and fluctuation in the world hadn't resulted in a spawn and I was losing all hope when they finally DID get around to it
Barbie, lets hope you manage to hang on to your Discus long enough for them to breed this time around. I didn't want to say because I have absolutely no experience with Discus but I had read somewhere that the hatch rate is affected by TDS and that the use of RO water is essential.
I have marked Discus up as another must have fish at some point in the not too distant future, I have come very close to getting some a few times. I've always ended up being put off by the stories I hear about all the diseases they are susceptible to, one day I'll pluck up the courage and get some. I guess the key factor here is getting good quality fish in the first place.
Perhaps the reason why TDS plays a role in the breeding of zebras is that in the wild the levels will rise and fall according to the amount of surface run off generated from rainfall.
Discus are really worth keeping but the rumours about disease are true (sadly) in my experience.
I bought 8 young discus from Punchard discus and grew them on. One Blue diamond refused to grow and was eventually put down but the other seven all grew into beauliful fish. Size of a CD, if not bigger. Then for no reason they developed some form of wasting disease. I had not introduced any new fish, or changed anything. They just started to waste away!? I treated for worms as a last resort but nothing worked, even asking the experts. I think I was unlucky but it put me right off. I kept run of the mill community trops until relatively recently getting back into things keeping some L nos.
I might get some more discus but there is a lot of rubbish out there. I would recommend going to a long established breeder.
Hi Tom 26000,
I dont keep discus at the moment, but have kept and bred them in the past for many years.I learnt all my lessons the hard way initially, by losing fish.
After the initial learning period,All new discus would go through a period of quarantine where I would treat them in 3 different stages, for
1) bacterial diseases
2) protozoans, hexamita etc
3) internal worms
I would treat them for the above, even though symptoms were not present. This enabled me to have many years of disease free discus.
I found that I had more success using human medications(that I found stated on books by discus experts) for 1 and 2 then anything available in the fish trade.
I know there are many fishkeepers who do not want to use medications but they worked for me and the discus !!!!
The same with my zebras, I treated new stock for gill flukes etc even though they did not show any symptoms. They might not have had bugs in the wild, but have gone though quite a few wholesale/retail systems where the chances of picking up some "bugs" are ridiculously high due to the throughput of various fish in their systems, before they reach us fishkeepers. I would rather them be disease free then suffer in silence !!!!!!!!!!
Regards,
Des.
I was wondering if it had to do with the PH, as my first spawn was induced after the water supplier suddenly dropped the PH to 5 (!), and I didn't find out until the next day.
but it seemed to have had a good effect on my zebras... mind you, it might have been a mere coincidence also.
