Sexing my L134's

[fair1889]

Can anyone help to sex my 3, 134's? When I bought these I thought I had a 2:1 ratio , 6 months later I am not so sure.




[Mod edit: Move to correct forum (the species is clear on these), and remove extra IMG tags --Mats]

[Suckermouth]

I'm sure people keeping L134's will be in soon, but it looks like 1 = female, 2 = male, and 3 = female. On the second one I think I see some blurry odontodes sticking out from the body. Those females of course are quite fat.

[fair1889]

That was my reading of them but I am not very good at it and was looking for reassurance.
If that is the case I will be after more help to try to get these breeding.
They are in a 30"x12x15. hma water ph6.5. sand bogwood ,lots of slate caves and a good flow across the front of the caves. They all have their own caves where they happily spend their time!!

[apistomaster]

Healthy adult L134 like those shown in your photos are easy to sex just by comparing their morphology from above.
Males have a "V" shape and females are wide in the beam between their pectoral fins. I concur with all the previous posters that you do have a trio.

I used this same method to select 4 F1 females to add to my small group(2 pairs) of wild breeders. I accidentally lost one of my females. Before that loss I had 3 females.
My sexing attempts were very successful. I have already had a flurry of spawns from these young females although their brood sizes are small(15) compared to 25 the older females typically produce.
Next step will be to set up a larger breeding group of solely F1 fish in a 40 gal breeder. I plan to use 4-5 males and 12 to 15 females.
I do suspect that by adding those 4 F1 females to an existing breeding group was helpful because I believe breeding catfish in aquariums release pheromones which were probably helpful in stimulating the young females to begin spawning.
I don't know if my experience is the same as that of other breeders but my L134 have only begun spawning around March 1st and end around September 1st give or take a couple weeks at either end. In short, my L134 seem to be seasonal breeders. I have only found the occasional few fry during the winter months. I have 3 beginning of spawning seasons as my data set and that seems enough to conclude that they definitely have a breeding season but it would be interesting to hear from other breeders if their experience is the same or different from mine.

Now would be the time to try to stimulate your trio to spawn. While my L134 have bred in only my tap water, I do find that it is easier to breed them, especially for their first times, if you keep them in soft water. I recommend something between 40 and 80 ppm TDS. This will be especially helpful if they are acclimated to somewhat harder water. I make the changes fairly quickly changing as much as 60% of your water using straight RO water in one step. The pH will drop gradually without taking any action unless you have calcareous substrate and/or rocks in their tanks but I do not use any pH buffers. My tap water is typically 340 ppm and has a pH of 7.4. After the initial large RO water change I may follow up next time with a 50% RO water change which is when my TDS drops to the lower end of the range I use. My pH gradually lowers then stabilizes around 6.0. Outside of their historical breeding season, I maintain my breeding group in straight tap water. I feed my L134 mainly earth worm sticks, then frozen blood worms supplemented with Spirulina Sticks a few times a week.

[fair1889]

|Thanks Larry that was just the kind of info I was after. I will try to inplement your suggestions . Good luck with your breeding project

[apistomaster]

Hi Fair,
I hope sharing my approach helps you spawn your L134's. They certainly look like they are ready to roll.
I don't know if it really matters but I only provide as many caves as I have males. Then I provide some wood and rock piles for the females to create their own hiding spots. My theory is that the males will be more likely to successfully claim and defend their cave and it forces the females willing to spawn to come knocking and try to get attention from the male(s) and if she is lucky, permission to enter. Once inside with the male he may block her inside the cave for 4 or more days until she spawns. I want the females to compete for the privilege to spawn. A male won't have as much power to influence his females if they have secure caves of their own. This has worked well for me so far whether or not my reasoning is flawed or not.
I like the to have some plants in my spawning tanks. I know that plants are not normal present in the typical pleco habitat but I grow Singapore Moss on my pieces of wood and allow Tropical Hornwort(Ceratophyllum demersum) to cover most of the top of the water column.The plants seem to help with the water quality and they provide additional surfaces on which the pleco fry may forage. I leave my fry in the breeding tanks until they have tripled or quadrupled their initial mass. At that stage they can be netted out and not be harmed by handling them carefully. The plants also provide the Cherry Shrimp habitats.

I raise colonies of Cherry Shrimp in my pleco breeding tanks. I do this because I like them, they help clean up uneaten food and provide a little extra cash flow from the same tank I'm using to breed fish. I think I sell enough shrimp each year to pay for most of my prepared fish food expenses. I had to restart my colonies after I allowed overpopulated shrimp colonies to crash during a 3 week heat wave where the temperatures were between 102 and 117*F for the 3 weeks. They are making a come back. I have reached the "critical mass" needed to get the colonies to begin to explode again. This year I will harvest the surplus and use them as fish food if I have to. I don't want to have to rebuild my numbers again.

[fair1889]

this is my tank at present as you can see the 134 are in the caves .Since this photo I have removed the left hand cave and the one in the right corner.
At the moment the tank has a PH6.4. tds 100, kh10ppm gh< 20ppm
Following your advice will try adding RO to get the tds reading down
Thanks again for the advice and if there is anything glaringly wrong with the set-up please let me know
Mark[
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[apistomaster]

I think your L134 breeding tank is set up just fine. Your water conditions are also good. You can use the RO trick to simulate the rainy season but it is OK as is. I think waiting them out is mainly all you have to do, They may not spawn this year but they are very likely to spawn around mid February next year if they refuse to spawn between now and then.