L312 eating L128s

[Cristoffer Forssander]

Hi!

I got two spawns of L312 last months.
I got 1+3 312s with a big group of L128s adult size.

A few weeks ago I discoverd white rashes on most of the L128. First I started to treat it as fungus... after this I thought it was caused by fighting among the L128s.

Yesterday I discoverd what causes whis... the small L312s form my first spawns is actually eating on the L128s.
Some L128s are actually so bad so I have to move the hole L128 group to antoher tank.

I will se if I can get this on photo or video later...


I never seen this before and the L128s are really stressed about the small L312 eating on them...
I dont know if its because the L128s are green in color or if the L312s are actually misstacing them for a veggie.

There is always new things to learn....


Cristoffer

[Stuey]

Hello there,

Thats great observation, makes you wonder what is attracting the juvenile L312 to the skin of the L128. And it seems they are not just trying to kind of graze the surface of the skin, but doing real damage.
Its suprising that the baby L312 have the dentition to get through the skin of the L128.

The Catalogue for L312 has breeding as unreported, would it be possible to give an over view of how you spawned these?

Many thanks
Stuey

[Suckermouth]

Well that's fascinating. I've heard of rasping between loricariids fighting in caves, where one is stuck while the other rasps on it, but I've never heard of baby loricariids doing this to larger ones.

Of course, fish mucus and skin cells probably at least have some of the nutrients that loricariids need...

[Cristoffer Forssander]

Hi

To this point I only seen the juveniles doing this!
So I dont know if the adults are doing any damage to the L128. But I just think its the juveniles causing this cause i had these groups in the same tank for more than 6 months without any rash on the L128s. The rashes only occured when i started to have juveniles in the tank.
I also have L312s in raise up tank and they dont grow near as fast as the L312 juveniles that eats on the L128.

I had really difficult getting a photo of these events.

I have a spawn report on some old tread in november!
They attatch the egg on the roof inside the cave sonthis is a bit different from other plecos.
The spawns are quite big, around 150 fry and the hatching rate is high. I think the eggs are quite small compared to other plecos but i dont know this for sure. I estimate the eggs to be around 3-4 mm.

Cristoffer

[Cristoffer Forssander]

Here is one of my L128s that had been eaten! If i actually never witness this happen i would have thought it was caused by fighting. This L128 is actually one of the better ones. Some of them are looking horrible.