Bristlenose Breeding

[Greenbean951]

I am getting some bristlenose catfishes that I plan to breed. I am going to keep the males and females seperated for awhile and I'm going to set up a breeding tank. It will be bare except for some terracotta pots for caves to lay the eggs in. Do you think the cats will breed in there or do they need substrate and decorations to feel comfortable enough? The cats are a rarity around here so I'm going to sell them to fish stores. What do you think a good price is to sell them for??? I really have no clue and I don't wanna by gyped! Also, do the fry have any special care needs? What do they eat? Do they grow fast? Any help will be graciously accepted!

[Sid Guppy]

In a nutshell:

#1 they need hideouts, and at least 1 per fish. It doesn't matter if those are terracotta pots, PVC-pipe (5 cm 0) , rocks, bogwoodpieces etc. They're not fussy.

#2: best substrate is plain old sand, or a bare tank. They don't mind gravel, but if you get baby Bristles, they need clean water, and gravel can get "dirty". With sand, the dirt stays on top, where you can vacuum it with a hose. Best just a thin layer, unless you grow live plants, of course. Ancistrus loooove planted tanks!

#3 waterparameters can be almost anything, if you have the "regular" bristlenose (I call those I have Ancistrus temminki, but Ancistrus definitions are a big mess, even the big catfish honcho's in here have a tough job checking the species of those commons). Best stay somewhere in the middle with the water; pH about 7, T 22 - 26'C (someone translate this to f@hrenheit? I'm no good on that... ), hardiness not too high. Much more important is clean water! the fry won't like nitrates etc.

#4: food! the whole trick breeding those is the food! They can and do eat almost anything remotely edible varying from topnotch brands to tankmembers who ceased to be.... . Best mix is pleco-tabs (anything with spirulina is OK, but tabs are easier for them than flake), bloodworms, pieces of bogwood to chew on ( they're able to live without, but they really appreciate it), crustaceans, and lots of veggies: peas (from the freeze NOT the tincan), zucchini? ( is this courgette in the US?), cucumber, broccoli stems, spinache, algae, algae, algae and more algae.....

#5 dad BN will protect and clean (! no fungicide needed!) eggs and fry. Once the fry "swarm" they'll feed a few days on their yolk, until they get really dark and look like miniature copies of adults. the first food should be veggie! The best you can do is peas, spinache, and weighed down cucumber slices. DON'T feed artemia and stuff, until they're a few wweks old and doing fine. Too much fry die if you start feeding proteins too early. The very best is anything covered in algae; plants, or pieces from those, rocks, bogwood; anything covered in green is excellent for baby BN's. and better stick like glue to a nice 1/3 a week waterchange regime.


hmm, turned out to be a big nutshel....must be a coconut then!

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[Jools]

batang_mcdo,

Last time I was polite, but WHY do you keep asking questions that the answers to are easily found on the site? If you are having trouble finding it let me know.

Jools

[Barbie]

I've spawned my ancistrus in everything from liquid rock in Kansas City(8.4+), to the very soft water I had in Anchorage. Don't mess with your tap water trying to change the parameters. They WILL spawn. I found THIS a few days ago in my 20 gallon long with a pair of albino bristlenose. I lost the female of my pair in the move here to Spokane, so the male was stuck with a younger, unrelated female. It took them a couple months to figure it out, is all. I use a powerhead on a hydro sponge filter, with the venturi open about 1/2 way for additional dissolved oxygen. Temp is at 80 degrees.

My tank has a bare floor, with just a pot for dad. I intend to add a couple of potted sword plants to allow the fry to munch on their leaves if they happen to run out of food, but otherwise, just keeping food in front of the fry and keeping the water paramters up will be your hardest problem. When I stay right on top of things and do daily water changes with zucchini or cucumberas an addition to the sinking wafers, I usually don't lose any fry. A few hours without food and you'll have a loss or two, IME. I had really good luck putting them in a hanging net breeder that I used a sponge filter powered by an air pump to run fresh water into. Then I could feed them enough, and keep them in a 55 gallon tank and not have them get too far from the food and risk starvation.

I made an interesting discovery the other day. When you dry cucumbers, they sink, so I'm going to dry all that are left in the garden, and experiment with their nutritional value.

Regular bristlenose are seen on availability lists around here for $3 or $4 a piece, but those will be good sized ones. It's not going to be a get rich scheme, by any means, but it should at least help supplement the food bill occasionally

Barbie