L128 Spawn!

[mlb7225]

Your post has given me a lot of help! I'm probably 2-3 mos out from setup of tank, but will for sure tag you in my post for your opinion!

[fishladyWI]

How old where they when they started breeding? I have a group of 6 that I bought 3 years ago. I am wondering if they are old enough yet. Size is around 2 1/2" -3". They appear to grow very slowly.

[MarcW]

Hi, the fish were bought at a size of 4.5 to 5.5 inches and I had them for a couple years some for longer, before the first spawn.

I would guess that they need to be about 4 inches plus to breed.

Maybe try varying the diet and use some repashy foods if you don't already. My young are between 3-4 inches total length and are about 2 years old. Their staple diet is repashy fruit luups, with some bottom scratcher mixed with soilent green.

Hope this helps.

[MarcW]

After finding some young in my L260 tank yesterday, my L128 have been trapping all day. They both must have loved their water change a couple days ago!

Fingers crossed there will be eggs soon, hopefully they won't fungus this time! I'll leave them alone over the weekend and take a look on Monday.

[MarcW]

They have spawned again! I came in to check this morning and saw a white/unfertilised egg floating around in the tank, took a quick look in the cave with a torch and there was a group of eggs in there, maybe a couple days old.

It seems the male is doing his job as I saw some empty egg casings in with the rest, so hopefully so long as they don't all fungus again there may be some wrigglers in a week or so.

I just hope moving them to my new fish room doesn't disrupt the spawns, as there I will be much better setup to care for the eggs, and artificially raise if needed.

[stuby]

Good to hear they are back at it! I'll keep my fingers crossed that they continue to spawn after the move.

Chuck

[MarcW]

Thanks Chuck, I'm keeping mine crossed too!

I just took a quick look and a few eggs have been kicked out of the cave, as the lights were already off for the night I'll avoid disturbing them further and collect any stray eggs in the morning.

[MarcW]

Just been in to do a water change and all the eggs were kicked and had fungus. There were several empty shells too.

In total I'd guess 50-60 eggs in this clutch. I've got a few thoughts and was wondering if anyone had experience any of them happening?

1. They weren't fertilised so they fungused and the male kicked them out. He has certainly been able to fertilise eggs previously, I'm 99% sure it's the same male spawning each time.
2. The male got carried away fanning too hard, the eggs left the cave and then fungused. I think this is the case for at least some of them.
3. A rival male tried to get into the cave causing the eggs to come out. I did notice this morning a similar sized male with odontodes missing from just one side, maybe caused by a fight? When they get moved to the fish room I'm going to set up the pair I think have been spawning in their own tank to test this one out.

Some of the eggs this morning

[stuby]

It's not only rival males that can be a problem...… so your plan of moving the breeding pair to a tank is a very good one!

Take care,
Chuck

[Jobro]

Yeah, a seperate breeding tank is always a good idea. Works good for me.

[MarcW]

I have posted this picture in my fish room thread but wanted to also update here for completeness.

It has been 2 years almost to the day that these young were laid as eggs, the largest is now just over 4 inches TL and the smallest around 3 inches TL.

They are now in their own aquarium, and hopefully in a year or so they'll be ready to breed and see if i have more success with F1 rather than their wild parents.

[DBam]

Just catching up on this thread after being away for about two years. You've done an incredible job! My first thought with your fungus problem was to run a UV sterilizer on that tank, and possibly trying to raise the amount of dissolved oxygen making its way into the lower areas of the tank where the caves are. I didn't go back and re-read the first few pages of the thread, you'll have to excuse me if you're already accounting for all this. I couldn't help but think that the fungus may be present in your area, around your house and neighborhood and will continually enter your tank regardless of RO or waterchange frequency.

[MarcW]

I haven't had a spawn since i've moved them to the fish room, I think they will need a while to settle down before they spawn again, although I have seen some promising behavior, the female is always outside the males cave, and i've noticed some rasping marks on her side.

I will see how the next spawning goes (providing there is one ), if I encounter the fungus issue again then I'll look into a small UV unit for that tank and see if it makes a difference, it's something else to try!

[Fundulopanchax76]

If previous time you had fertilized eggs and last time all were fungused, then maybe water is not good for fertilizing ! Some fish can fertilize only in soft water without CaCO3.

[MarcW]

That was going to be my first step, raise the eggs in pure, or nearly pure water, I've heard that works well with woodcat eggs to stop them fungusing. If that doesn't work, it might be worth trying a small UV unit.

[Fundulopanchax76]

I meant use a rain water with very low hardness and maybe some cattapa leaves for tannins.

[Fundulopanchax76]

Can you make some pictures of your female 128 ? I want see them from close distance.

[TwoTankAmin]

Firstly, congrats on the spawning. Next, a few observations-

The dad will rarely leave the cave for any amount of time. He may slip out trying to fine a bite to eat, but his main dedication is tending the young. However, new dads often make mistakes and allow or contribute to eggs/wigglers being ejected. As for infertile eggs, he should deal with them. New dads will improve their skills over time.

In general females are ready to spawn again before the dad is. He will tend the eggs from scratch to release as free swimmers for several weeks. Many folks will keep a 2m/1fm ratio so that she can produce eggs that get fertilized by different males.

One trick to prevent accidental egg ejection is to slightly elevate the front of caves so they tilt slightly down towards the back. Since most fish see eggs, wigglers and small fry as food. If you want to insure the best results from your plecos. I would suggest you consider using a species tank for them.

One last thought on parameters. When one is working with RO and altering one's parameters, it is usually best to upgrade from hobby test kits (liquid or strips) to digital equipment. I use a continuous digital monitor on my altum angel tank where I drop TDS and pH via RO/DI water and a mix of botanicals. I could not do this with any degree of accuracy and reliability without the digital equipment.

p.s. Only dead eggs tend to fungus initially. The dad should remove them. In the absence of this, the fungus can spread to healthy eggs and kill them. if one pulls eggs to hatch in a trap or small tank some folks will add something to prevent fungus and then manually remove dead eggs.

[MarcW]

The female can be seen here viewtopic.php?f=4&t=46797&start=40 on the third page of my fish room thread, its the picture of them in a white bucket with only three fish, the top one is the female, which is wider behind the pectoral fins, although still has some stubble!

TwoTank - I have one female and 3 males in this group, and after previous experiences have raised the entrance of the cave, I would love to leave the eggs with the male, that's how I have the 6 F1 fish today, but he just seems to kick the eggs out right after they are laid.

I'm also saving for some more sophisticated monitoring equipment specifically a good pH meter, for now I'm just hoping they'll spawn again after the move to the fish room!

Thanks everyone!

[Jobro]

Marc,

if you keep experiencing dropped eggs, I would strongly consider dropping the male

Move him to a different home and see if one of the remaining males will fare bettter.

(And when I say different home I mean a different Tank in your fishroom)

[MarcW]

I've just returned from a 10/11 day business trip, when doing water changes yesterday I found all 4 adult L128 dead, all my other fish are fine, including the 6 young which are in a different tank. I've added some pictures below but I believe there were several factors which caused this, hopefully by sharing them others can avoid similar issues. I don't believe it was leaving the fish for 10/11 days which caused them to die, but:

1. I recently started trying a new food which they didn't seem to take to as well as the previous one, I left instructions that they be fed this 3 times while I was away, they didn't eat much if any of the food, which was decaying in the tank when I returned. Next time, I will not leave instructions to feed any larger fish while I'm away, they will be fine for a week or two without food. Maybe just a small pinch of flake for small tetras to keep them going once a week.
2. The flow from the filter (air powered HMF) was very slow when I returned, the same for the air driven sponge filter, I should have cleaned these before I left, and with the decaying food maybe there was an issue with low dissolved oxygen in the water, due to the significantly reduced flow.
3. From looking at the faeces a while back I thought they may need to be wormed soon, but I kept putting it off, maybe this didn't help when combined with the other factors above.
4. I noticed a yellow oily like substance, in some of the caves and floating on the water, maybe fats from the fish decaying, maybe something else? I've not seen this before, there is a picture below.

I tested for Ammonia, but found none, I was expecting to find some, the smell wasn't great, after that I didn't perform any further tests.

One fish, I believe the female, was in a worse state than the others, had maybe been dead for 2-3 days, very swollen, with eyes popping out, I guess this further contributed to the loss of the others, who only showed very early signs of swelling. The one with the hollow looking stomach in the pictures below is the one which was most swollen but deflated while I was removing it from the tank.

The young look great, so I will concentrate on raising them for now, hopefully they will breed in a year or two once they put on some more size.

Yellow oil like substance floating on the water

[Fundulopanchax76]

Sorry for your fish ! I just found my 128 eat with big appetite raw potatoes so i have not problem with food anymore. Of course they have ever been eating flakes and tablets. Maybe you can find some new big 128 on market ?
But yes decaying food is reason for death of yours - it makes bacterias breed explosively and they atack and kill fish ! That happens everytime someone let too much food in the tank !

[stuby]

Sorry to hear you lost them! It happens to us all.....

Chuck

[MrRRunner]

Sorry to hear of your loss too,

[GirlsGotFisshues]

Sorry for your fish ! I just found my 128 eat with big appetite raw potatoes so i have not problem with food anymore. Of course they have ever been eating flakes and tablets. Maybe you can find some new big 128 on market ?
But yes decaying food is reason for death of yours - it makes bacterias breed explosively and they atack and kill fish ! That happens everytime someone let too much food in the tank !

Raw potatoes? Really? huh.

Sorry for your loss. Getting them grown to a point where you can reliably identify a pair and get them spawning takes a lot of time, patience, and love.

[bekateen]

Sorry for your loss. That is always disappointing. And frustrating.

Regards, Eric

[Jools]

I think it's mostly reduced DO - been there. That said, I also learned never to clean a filter less than three days before a trip because they can sometimes break due to cleaning. If I were travelling on a Monday, I'd always hit the maintenance on Friday night or Saturday morning.

I've left fishes in the fish room for 2 weeks without food, no issue. It's failure of filters and less so heaters that account that have caused me the most grief.

HTH,

Jools

[MarcW]

Thanks Jools, next time I won't feed when I'm away, I guess I've got lucky with everything being fine in the past.

I didn't think the HMF would clog so quickly, I have a feeling it may have been something to do with the gelling agents in the Repashy food, as the two tanks where I heavily feed Repashy had the foam clog, but none of the others have. I'll feed that a bit more sparingly in future.

[Jools]

Also consider adding cherry shrimp to infest the HMF.

Jools

[MarcW]

Good idea I'll look out for some this weekend!