I must have infinite patience or fish who understand English

[TwoTankAmin]

About two years ago I decided to try my hand at something besides zebras and bristlenose. I picked up 5 lovely spotted hypans bought as 201s but which proved to be contradens and a group of eleven wc L-134s. The contradens spawned for me while still in temporary quarters and have continued doing so since being moved but all the 134s have done is to laugh at me.

I tried all sorts of things from major TDS changes via using distilled water. I messed with temperature, diet and even flow, all to no avail. So I began telling folks that if they have not come through by the catfish convention in Oct. I was going to sell them and get something else to try.

I am sorry to say that I can not sell them now. I watched an amazing process yesterday of two courting L-134s which involved lots of caresses and the need to lure her into a larger cave when both could not quite fit in his digs. About 20 minutes ago I finally spotted the eggs It looks like dad is on about 10-15 eggs. I guess they must have heard me talking about selling them on if I had no spawn by Oct.

I am relieved to know that a pleco that doesn't end in cistrus will spawn in my tanks.

[Joby]

Thats fantastic news, so pleased for you

Its amazing what threatening to sell them will do

Good luck with the eggs

[John]

Congrats TTA

[vanillarum]

Nice job, T ! Wanna buy some 46s, 333s, 240s, 340s, 400s,260s and 104s ? Cause none of them have spawned for me yet ! Again, nice job !!

[YSR50]

Congrats. I went through the same thing with my Frogs. After two and a half years of trying I gave up, next thing I knew there was fry on the glass. Get ready for some larger batches once they get the hang of things. This is my second year/season with them spawning and the last 2 times were over 50 each.

[dconnors]

Congrats!

[Jacqueline]

Congratulations

I'm reading your post and can tell you, things are exactly the same here Only difference, still no eggs
I bought some juvenile L134 now and hope to raise them to adults. Being used to my water and way of doing things I hope they will spawn for me when time is right. The adults I've got will get a new home.

Good luck on raising the fry

[TwoTankAmin]

Gutted-

Went to do the morning cave checks and the eggs were gone. I found 4 or 5 under a sponge filter and the rest were gone. They appeared to still be viable so they are now in a breeder trap. I do not have high hopes though.

[vanillarum]

Keep the faith, T !! At least they are making progress !! Good luck.

[Joby]

Hope the ones in the breeding trap hatch for you, i've raised L134 that way a few times when the males have kicked some out

[TwoTankAmin]

Well all but one rescued egg went bad, but I have one wiggler in the trap. The other interesting thing is the too small cave has been occupied since after the spawning. I cant see well in there but maybe the dad rescued some eggs and is on them in there. Only time will tell if both the lone wiggler makes it or if there are more eggs hidden.

[Rob]

Hi Twotank

The first ever batch of zebra eggs I was successul with, resulted in one loan egg in a breeding trap after all the others went bad. I still have that zebra, and it was that zebra that made me set up the first incarnation of http://www.zebrapleco.com almost 7 years ago. So you never know what will happen

Edit: just found this, http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... f=5&t=2508 on PC from my original post, almost 7 years to the day!!!

Good luck.

rob

[Barbie]

TTA I'd bet that a competing female kicked those eggs out. I have had dozens of spawns back to back like that when an egg ball gets kicked out. Congrats on your "lucky" and hopefully you've got another big batch in there in the works. You're going to be happily impressed when you see how fast those little monsters grow compared to Hypancistrus!

Barbie

[TwoTankAmin]

The second spawn happened this past weekend. It went the same way- at nightly feeding I spotted the same courtship around the too small cave. The next morning dad was on eggs in the adjacent larger cave. I did not want to leave anything to chance so this time I pulled the cave with dad and eggs to a trap in the tank and repositioned a powerhead to get from flow through it.

Inside two days there was a golden egg outside the cave. This soon grew to a total of about 15 with teeny wigglers. I left them in the trap and used a baster to remove any debris and shells. On Tuesday with one dead wiggler and close to 15 more bouncing around I finally decided to check the cave which I amn unable to se into while its in the trap. Sure enough dad was plastered to the back on some number of remaining eggs and this is when I decided to try and put the wigglers back in with dad in the hopes he would do the work I did not want to.

While it is easy as pie to suck up eggs with wigglers into a baster, having them stay in it while one tried to put the end into a cave mouth is almost impossible, they roll out before you can get the nozzle into the cave. Not one to be stumped too easily I found another solution. A clear flexible hose about 2x the diameter of airline worked great. I was able to suck a few eggs into it, use my tongue to plug the back end and then put the other end into the cave, By raising the back end the water, and the wigglers rolled out into the cave. The neatest part was as i would put 4 or 5 eggs into the cave, dad would back up some to help gather then and move them to the pile at the rear. His tail would poke out of the entrance wiggle and then go back in.

Once I got all the eggs back in I also managed to make the trap tilt so the cave would slope down from front to back. While I am unable to see into the cave to see exactly what is going on, its now been 2 days and not one egg has come back out of the cave.

[John]

Don't You Just Love it When a Plan Comes Together?


Congrats and good luck TTA !