This night, a pump got jammed, I don't know way... but cause low oxygen level I lost my L241 and L91 breeding group (or most parts of them). I had them in a big aquarium temporary casue of the building of my basement where I was planning on breeding them...
I just feel sick then I see the images, but I thought it could be interesting to see the L91 females....
Almost dead heavy gravid L91 female 18 cm TL
Two dead females: 18 and 23 cm TL
Both again, cutted open.... a lots of eggs....
Close up....
I was hoping to breed tractic once more.... but now it seemes that it's not going to be...
ElTofi... perhaps we shall start a grief group for those who lost some nice plecos....
That is definitely sad news. I'm hoping to pick up a group of these when I get to Wigan in a few weeks - I haven't quite decided which Leporacanthicus I will get, but L. triactis is definitely on the upper half of the list.
cristoffer,
What a devastating loss.
FWTW, I keep at least one power hed driven filter, one air lift sponge filter and an air stone in all my pleco tanks.
I bought most of my power heads about 5 years ago and one by one they have begun giving out. I have ordered replacements in excess of my immediate needs but I am also going to order a couple of new impellers in case the failures are caused by their teflon bearings wearing out. I am an advocate of redundancy for all my tanks since you can never predict a power filter failure.
Sorry to learn of your losses. They obviously have been kept well in your care.
I've learn from my mistake and have done a back up with air filter as apistomaster suggested.
I've been thinking about this a long time, but a was lazy... and now distaster struck my breedingoup and I'm mad about myself...
I haven't lost any L25... I got only juveniles and they are doing fine!
I will recive another female In a few weeks from a firend that don't whant to keeps hes any more so I'm living on hope and I will make sure that the next time I whrite about triactis again is when I bred them once more... that time with photos...
My stomack is still twisted but my friends pair will help a lot in recovering...
I could have lost my trio L128 and my two L114 females so it could be a lot worse...
But very sad for those fishes... so very unnecessary...
As I have (and had) several different species of Leporacanthicus, I've learned a grat deal in feeding them.
They are carnevores for sure but they really need much weggies.
In a months time I have givem them
shopped shrimps, clam and fish.
Pleco wafles for borh carnevores and herbivores.
Canned gread peas
My own fish food mix;
1/3 non red listed fish
1/3 shrimps and some clam
1/3 weggies: spinach, carrots, broccoli and so on.... 50% grean peas. Also some garlic and 10 blue berries...
Spirulina powder and multi witamin and minerals
I mix this in a mill with oat flakes, mixed with water...
Well one thing is sure. You have a winning conditioning diet for these fish.
I think bringing the females into breeding condition is 9/10 of getting any fish to breed that are normally considered difficult whether they are Plecos or wild Discus.
Cristoffer,
Firstly, I can only echo everyone's condolences.
Secondly though, what do you think did the fish in? A jammed pump, even for a day or two, should not have caused your fish to die. As you might imagine I have nearly daily power outages. Each outage lasts from several to a dozen hours. On a really bad day my filters may only run 2-3 hours out of 24. I have never lost a fish because of this and the majority of fishes I am keeping can not take atmospheric O2 like loricariids can (which makes it nearly impossible for low O2 levels to kill them).
Electricity driven filtration is very nice, but it is really only there to slightly slow the degradation of the water quality between water changes. Aquarists, for the vast majority of the aquarium hobby's history, did not have electric pumps and filters.
You said they were in a temporary set up, which especially if it was not well matured and was heavily stocked, was probably the actual reason the animals died. The extreme swelling the dead fish exhibit is not consistent with death from low O2 levels, but rather nitrite (or possibly ammonia) poisoning. Death from a lack of O2 causes the eyes to bulge nearly out of the body and your fishes do not show this characteristic. I think the lack of the filter's presence to process rising ammonia/nitrite levels was the cause of the disaster.
It may be somewhat academic at this point since the animals are already dead, but I think it is worth noting what was likely the actual cause of death. I would take the offered advice of having a back up aeration system, but I would also keep in mind that a good set up should easily run several days to a week without electricity or major water changes. If a lack of electric driven filtration/aeration for a few hours causes stress, or even deaths, the tank is being run way too close to the edge of its carrying capacity.
Once again, very sorry about this disaster.
-Shane
"My journey is at an end and the tale is told. The reader who has followed so faithfully and so far, they have the right to ask, what do I bring back? It can be summed up in three words. Concentrate upon Uganda."
Winston Churchill, My African Journey
I'm very sorry to hear your lost, ik lost a female 91 last week, see was very fat an see died with eggs, see could not get lost of thear eggs, very sad, see didden't now what to do with it i think.
Shane wrote:
You said they were in a temporary set up, which especially if it was not well matured and was heavily stocked, was probably the actual reason the animals died. The extreme swelling the dead fish exhibit is not consistent with death from low O2 levels, but rather nitrite (or possibly ammonia) poisoning. Death from a lack of O2 causes the eyes to bulge nearly out of the body and your fishes do not show this characteristic. I think the lack of the filter's presence to process rising ammonia/nitrite levels was the cause of the disaster.
It may be somewhat academic at this point since the animals are already dead, but I think it is worth noting what was likely the actual cause of death. I would take the offered advice of having a back up aeration system, but I would also keep in mind that a good set up should easily run several days to a week without electricity or major water changes. If a lack of electric driven filtration/aeration for a few hours causes stress, or even deaths, the tank is being run way too close to the edge of its carrying capacity.
Once again, very sorry about this disaster.
-Shane
The main problem was heavily stocked aquarium, but there where not that many fishes so it couldn't be like that in a few weeks. I had them like this for two month and also got breeding attemts juring this time.
Form my experince, Leporacanthicus species is sensetive to low O2 level as Pseudacanthicus doecent have this problems.... I had made filter I had done filter changes just a week before and two days befor this, I had done a 50 % water change. The difference, this noght was the jammed pump. But perhaps you're right....
The females hed this size for a longer period, so I had just seen them as heavily gravid. The biggest female tried to force a L240 male into breeding last spring when I didn't had a male for her. And at that poin't, she looked like this!... Perhaps they are a bit more swollen opn the photo....
Walter. I'm sorry to hear about you're dead L91... bigger females ar hard to find!
DJ-don wrote:so sorry about this chris
and it must have been hard for you too
did the other about to do female survive? i hope it did
Thanks!
I have 1 male and 1 female left who survived. But because they are so agressive I won't put just one female with one male. I think I need two females to make sure that the male don't get to agressive against one of them!
Sometimes, as is well documented with Rainbow Trout, if a mature female is unable to spawn, such as when there is no inlet/outlet stream in a lake habitat, they will die full of ripe ova..
Perhaps in some cases with larger pleco species the females unable to find mates undergo excessive stress in trying to deal with full ovaries. I do not mean the so-called egg binding that some speak of. I think that is actually a rather rarer phenomenon than many fish breeders believe. It may be that when trying to breed large plecos that the sex ratios should be more closely balanced.
This would create new problems like finding enough territory for each male to control aggression.
In many smaller pleco species, the males will spawn with two females consecutively but these are species which never produce very large spawns in the first place unlike the larger species. I have seen this serial spawning behavior many times with the common Ancistrus and at least a few times among Peckoltia sp L134. It is just something to consider. I am only putting forth one possible hypothesis.
I know about this critical moment for the female.
But two dead females the same night? A also lost juveniel L241...
But they where the most gravid fishes in the aquarium so perhaps they where a bit exposed than the other fishes!?
This could be one of several reasons for the death perhaps!
The aquarium has shown low leavles of nitrit and nirate....
I'm happy for the breeding, but I would prefer to have the females left...
I'm confident that I will fint one or two more female but it is a bit expencive.... unfortunately...
I merely offered the hypothesis as one of many to consider.
Rarely is any multiple fish deaths to structural failures, are simply due to only one factor.
I tend to go along with what Shane has written that even if all filtration and aeration were off line temporarily that even that should not result in multiple deaths unless the carrying capacity of the tank has been exceeded.
Perhaps in this situation you were close to that line and the egg laden females were particularly vulnerable to a temporary drop in water quality?
I doubt you will ever know all the reasons why this happened but will probably allow a greater margin of error by decreasing the bio-load a little. This cannot hurt regardless of the circumstances.
Congrats on the spawn!
... sorry for you, and I know what you feel...