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I got four young zebras from Rob a while back and also had another young zebra from a fish shop in England.

I had been keeping them in bare bottom tank:


I wanted a substrate in the tank, as substrates looks a lot better to me.
Rob keeps his young in a bare bottom tank, so this was the first time they will have been in a tank with a substrate.

It totally freaked them out and they all piled into one cave


They were pretty active before and constatly squabbling over caves, and for the first few days the only signs of movement in the tank was the odd track in the sand.
It even put them off their food for a while, though they are starting to settle down again and food is being eaten.

Who would have thought a substrate would have affected them so much
The three adults i have in another tank, were neither up nor down when i put the sand in the tank, they just cleared spots with there tails:

hi Andrew

all my plecos infact fish are in sand inc my Zebs, they all love it, they like to dig, mess it around with their tails etc, i guess with your zebs not being in it, it may take time for them to get used to it but they will

My zebras ( love saying that ) dont care the sand away from the cave like most others do why is this?

Totally off subject i have noticed a different pattern in 2 of my zebras tails the lines aren't just straight across some of them have a little black bit just randomly in the middle of the tail pattern?

Has anyone else found this in there zebs?

Can you get some pics to show us Shell?

My youger zebras tail pattern is different from the straight lines the adult tails have (top picture compared to the second bottom picture).

Maybe they are younger zebras and the lines will devolp with age.

I have to borrow a camera but i have to try and catch them with the tail all flarred up but yes i will get a pic as soon as i can

The 2 zebs in question 1 is a fully fully grown male! 4 inches and the secong is a 3 inch female all with roughly the same markings on the tail, i was wondering if it was a different type of zeb i.e the L98 or one of the others ( sorry not to hot on the other names )

Andrew... Where did you get teh purple slate caves from (in Pic 2?)

We have plumb slate in our tanks (it looks great with the sand ) but havent been able to get any thin tiles to make caves from....

Thanks

smithrc
It is slate tiles from a builders merchant, cut and siliconed together, a cheap source of good thin slate

I cant find any in plumb