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I am into the first week of looking after some very expensive 1" zebra pleco's that have been tank bred. I have started feeding them frozen blood worm which I cut into short pieces. They are in a bare bottom tank with an over size sponge filter. Tank size is about 3 gal. with 3 fry per tank. Have them set up in 3 seperate tanks. Water temp is about 76 without a heater, and my water ph runs about 7.8

Any suggestions or comments Thanks Brian

Welcome brm

Welcome.

How come you are not using a heater? Zebras prefer warmer temps.

Also, put some wood and rocks and pile them so they form little caves.

Also try a few other different types of food as a blood worm diet will not provide a growing plec with all it needs. I use brine shrimp tetra prima and have been converted by another member to use dora min as well. You also might want to step up the fitration or better still, move all the fish to a bigger tank with lots of caves/wood and over filter that. One last thing, how often do you intend to do water changes, in tanks that small you should probably look at doing them every few days!

I have put them in the smaller tanks so I can check that they are eating and I can see them all the time. Also to put a heater in a small tank is hard and I don't have any luck with heaters as the like to lock up and cook the fish. Once I am comfortable with them I will move them into a 30 gal. with rocks and driftwood. So far they are not in a hurry to eat when I feed them as they eat after I turn the lights out. Have been doing a small water change every three days to clean up any left over food. Hope I am on the right track. Thanks for the advice. Brian

Hi

A Neighbour of mine used to breed Neons and Cardinals in his garage.

Rather than heating each tank individually he made a small room at the back of the Garage and insulated it, then he heated the whole small room to temperature.

I dont know if it worked out any cheaper, but he never suffered a blown heater; he also cornered the local supply of tetras to the petshops.

I might be worth considering?

I have a 9'x20' room in the basement which is insulated and with the light ballasts and the hot water heater in the room I can maintain about 80-82 f in the summer and 76-78in the winter. This has worked well for my Africans. Will put a heater in the 30 gal when I set ti up.

I know allot of people like using heater controllers in case their heaters stay on no matter temp setting. They work well and not that expensive.

Heating the room is another idea, but I've been at a breeders fish room where he heated the room. It was rather warm, since he was breeding allot of plecos. I could imagine how much sweat he was losing when perform his regular maintenances, like water changes.

Hi Brm,

Welcome to ZP.

Plastic Mac