Any interest in a documenting of my summer breeding related project

[TwoTankAmin]

As I have posted before, I have too many fish. I am making a big push this summer to remedy this. I have set up 6 tanks outside on our screened terrace and I am using them for the following things.

1. I have too many L236 bought as super white but which turned out to be regular 236 although some have some nice white patterning. There are somewhere in the 30s in number and have been spawning on and off for a while. My goal is twofold. First, I am trying to nab pairs in a cave and moving them to 1/2 of a 20 long. The idea is to end up with a proven pair. I am also pulling to similar set-ups any males I find on eggs/wigglers to have a proven male. I will then mix a proven pair and a proven male to offer a proven reverse trio along with some number of fry. I have already gotten one proven trio with the dad on eggs and I just pulled a pair in a cave to the summer tank. I also have two males there on new wigglers.

2. I have a lot of assorted sized L173 offspring from wild parents. I have to pull them both from the breeder tank as well as a 20L growout tank over crowded and move them into a 40 breeder for the summer.

3. I am looking to sell my breeder group of L450s and all the offspring. I need to move all offspring from the breeder and growout tanks to a 50 gal. for the summer.

4. I am looking to sell my 173b breeder group and all offspring. I am looking to move all the offspring to a 40 breeder for the summer.

5. I am doing the above to create tank space to grow out L236 offspring from my L236 group which originated with Robert Budrovcan and Aquarium Glasser. I will also free up larger grow space for the 236 group in 1. above. I need space for my second 173 tank raised group growout as well.

If there is interest in my creating a thread to track the progress of above and to include the pictures I might get of it, please let me know in a reply to this thread.

[eelsnot]

I'm interested in your efforts Chris.

[Deb]

It sounds interesting to me.

Deb

[bekateen]

To me also, thank you.

Cheers, Eric

[Jools]

For sure, always interested in your output.

Jools

[flatfish]

Sounds interesting.

[TwoTankAmin]

*sigh*

I started working in earnest over the weekend. Since nobody had replied, I did not take any pics. It is a real pita taking pics when doing the work. I am wet, there is stuff all over the place and I am trying to net and size fish before moving them. So I will try to rectify that.

So far here is what has been done w/o pics.
- Set up 6 tanks on the terrace- 50, 2 x 40B, 3 x20L. I have Poret foam sheets to act as tank dividers in the 20Ls.
- Pulled one pair and several dads on eggs/wigglers from group 2 of the 236s. These are in 2/3 of the 20L.
- Pulled 24 assorted L450 offspring from 1/2 inch to 2.75 inches from the growout tank and another 19 at .5 to 2.0 inches from the breeder tank.
- I have been pulling dads on eggs from the Budrovcan group of 236 to a divided 33 long. I seem to lose the eggs however and am not sure why. There are also 6 offspring at 1.5 inch or more in that space. The other half of that tank holds 0 offspring from the #2 group at 1 - 1.75 inch.

As part of the summer project I an redoing the filtration for the 6 pleco tanks in the fish space. I am removing as many pumps and hang on filters as I can and replacing them with air driven Matten filters and Poret foam cubes. I am also adding a couple of bubble wands to the back glass of two tanks to increase circulation and aeration.

The best part is still to come- pulling L173 offspring from a 20L growout tank and then from the breeder tank to one of the 40Bs on the terrace. I should have about 25 in the 20L and no idea re the breeder tank, However, I regularly see a lot of fry some of which are over an inch. I will document as much as I can in pics.

I am hoping to sell off all my 450s and 173bs completely (breeding group and offspring) which will let me take down some tanks. I am getting too old to keep up with it all. I think I have a buyer for the 450s but the 173b are available if anybody is interested.

[TwoTankAmin]

I have a bunch of pics in the camera and hope to get them processed for posting this week. I can report that I have moved all of the L450 offspring (43 fish) to the 50 gal. tank on the terrace. I also broke down the TR L236 75 and moved 5 tiny fry plus another 7 fish to a 40b outside. I will be moving the other 8 offspring I have parked in 1/2 of a 33 long into the terrace tank as well. 19 spawning size fish remain in the breeder tank and there are 5 more proven breeders (1fm/4m) in 20Ls on the terrace. Some will be returned to the breeder tank.

On the downside, I did water changes on the terrace tanks on over the weekend. I discovered several dead fry- still with some yolk sac left in one tank, There were a few others out of the cave and alive and a few alive in the cave with dad. I am not sure what got the three bodies I removed.

[TwoTankAmin]

Sorry, pics still in the camera

However, I pulled a cave with dad on eggs from the 236 Budrovcan line tank. I have moved the 8xL236 from the TR group that were in 1/2 of the 33 long to the terrace. So the pulled cave is now in that space. So far so good. As of this afternoon the dad was diligently fanning the wigglers.

I also have two L173 dad on offspring in different stages. I am trying to work up the courage to pull apart this tank and remove offspring. I may compromise and divide it and leave the two breeding males on the left half alone. There are fewer offspring in the right half, but some is better than none.

All but the males from the TR L236 group which were in holding in 20Ls have been returned to the breeder tank. Found no fry in one, a couple in another which I added to the tank with the proven trio. There was no action from the pair I had pulled to holding. She was not in the cave and had not been for some time, so I returned them to the breeder tank.

With luck I will move the 173b to the terrace this week and I hope to move the L173 growing out in the 20L to the 33L in the fish space that used to be a grow out tank for L450s. I will not risk the L173 outdoors. I will also have a temperature controller on this tank.

Lastly, I spotted a couple of fry in the TR L173 breeder tank. I am a bit worried about this group. It is 11 fish. I am thinking a couple of the fish may not be 173 but are zebras. I used to have 14 fish but sold off 3 which were in the middle of the size range for this group of fish. I had taken 5 out to CatCon in 2016 for an ID from qualified folks. They did confirm what I had were 173. The problem is that left 9 other fish in the group not identified as such. At the time they were too young for me to ID. It is now a fw years later and they should be easy to ID as 173, but they are not. They should be larger than they are as well. I hate to think they are interbreeding if some are zebras. Until I can resolve this, I will not sell the five offspring I now have at about 1.75 inches. *sigh*

[Jools]

It's amazing how two young that look the same can develop into very different looking things. While populations, variants and species can get mixed up, this has being going on for decades since we first bred these species from wild stocks.

Will be interesting to see pics once you have time.

Cheers,

Jools

[TwoTankAmin]

Just a quick update. I just pulled a cave with a couple inside from the TRl236 tank and moved it to 1/2 of a 20L on the terrace. That was pretty quick work by them.

The WC L173 alpha male no longer has fry in his cave, they have left. The number 2 male has fry almost ready to leave. These guys get really hairy all over their body in spawning mode as do the 236. I have never noticed this on zebras. Maybe I have poor eyesight, but I think I should have spotted this over the past 13 years at some time if it were the case.

[TwoTankAmin]

I have pics. Not the greatest but if the saying, a picture is worth 1,00 words, these which will appear in this thread are worth about 400 to 500 words.

These are the six terrace tanks. Shooting out there is not easy as there are reflections in the glass But this should give an idea of the layout.

All of the tanks have about 1/2 to 3/4 inches of sand, driftwood, rocks and slate. They have a single heater meant for a larger tank and they all have the back glass painted black. I monitor the overnight temps and have enough spare heaters to have up to 15 or more watts/gal. I cannot battle temps below the high 50s and they signal the end of the summer tank season. The air power is from a Jehmco DAPMH15 high powered mid-size diaphragm Air Pump for 8 to 15 outlets.

The stand on the left has a 50 gal. on top which now contains 43 L450 offspring ranging in size from 1/2 to 2.75+ inches. Filtration is are a 5x5 and a 3x3 Poret cube plus an AquaClear 200 gph power filter that came from the 450 grow out tank. It also has an airstone. ↓
The tank under it is a 20 gal. long and holds a proven breeder reverse trio from my TR L236. There are some number of fry from both dads. I saw six between 1/2 and 3/4 inches out at the same time during the last water change. This tank is filtered with a pair of 4x4 Poret cubes.

The center stand has a 40 gal breeder on top which now contains 18 offspring from my 173b ranging in size from 1.5 to 3+ inches. The filtration is a 4x4 and a 3x3 Poret cube plus a Liberty 200 gph power filter which came from the 173b grow out tank. ↓
The tank under it is a 20 gal. long and holds a 40 gal breeder which now contains 19 offspring from my TR L236 which range in size from 1/2 to 2 inches. This tank is filtered by a 5x5 and a 4x4 Poret cube.

The stand on the right has two 20 gal. longs. Both are filtered by two 4x4 Poret cubes and are divided in half using a 2 or 2.5 inch thick Poret foam which can become a matten filter in the future. the tank on top currently has a pair of TR 236 on each which were pulled from breeder tank. One cave was moved on Aug. 7 and the other was moved on Aug. 13.↓
The tank under it currently contain no fish. It is meant to be used for TR 236 reverse trios.

My next post will be more picture heavy. I am in the process of redoing the filtration in the fish space which holds 6 tanks for Hypancistrus. Four are for breeding and two are for grow out.

[Quachq]

Chris do you use any Wavemaker’s for your tanks?

[TwoTankAmin]

No wave makers. I have used a variety of filters in my pleco tanks over the years. This includes power filters, sponge/Poret foam filters both air and pump driven, powerheads with large intake sponges and canisters.

I have been moving away from the power filters, pumps and power heads to more air driven Poret foam cubes and matten filters. My experience is that the fish need good oxygen more than strong current. The fish have adapted to living in strong current, but I do not believe they need it to survive and thrive. Some flow is needed but not big flow.

Consider how these fish reproduce- in cave like structures. One of the hallmarks of this is that this minimizes the current. The plecos work to keep the eggs clean and the water well oxygenated. I have never notice them trying to create strong current.

One of the things that has fascinated me about the hobby is how different most tanks are from the wild and how the fish adapt/deal with the differences. In the wild when fish fight. There are many ways the loser can escape. One is to get far enough away. In most tanks this is not an option. So we have to provide plenty of cover which will allow one fish to get out of sight of the other.

Another is how fish learn to interact with humans. Nobody changes water or cleans things in the wild, but a lot of use do this weekly in our tanks. My first pair of discus went into a 25 gal. tank. Initially they would cower in fear when I cleaned the tank. After a few months I was having to push them out of the way to get at crud I wanted to siphon out. I cannot imagine fish in the wild doing this. I have had young SAEs try to nibble the fine hair on the back of my hands and forearms believing it to be thread algae.

It is the same with the Hypans I have kept. They spawn despite there being only mild current in a tank as long as their diet was good, the parameters are within acceptable ranges and the temperature and TDS moving in the right ways. In many cases it is not even necessary to manipulate certain parameters.

Before trying to get the next post with pics of the breeder tanks, I can report i pulled 17 assorted L173 offspring from the 20L and moved them to their new home in a 33 long. With luck, today I will be extracting the offspring from the breeder tank.

edited because I cannot spell/type

[TwoTankAmin]

I have a camera full of pictures I can't seem to get downloaded and edited so I can post them. But I could not wait for them to post this info. Part of he summer plan was to move the offspring from my breening group of wild L173 to a larger grow tank, I had them in a 20L and then the 33L breeder tank. I had no clue how many I might have in either tank.

I moved the kids from the 29L forst and shut it down. I hoped to have all 23 024 that went in. But many were very small when they were moved and these guys are fragile until they get a bit of size. I still had all 5 of the now juvies at 1.75 to 2+ inches and then another 12 fish for 17 in all. So I was a bit disappointed to have lost 6 or 7.

Today I am finally breaking down the breeder tank to remove the kids to the grow tank. I do this in two stages by using a Poret foam sheet to divide the tank. This way I can do the fry hunt in two halves. I had no idea what to expect beyond knowing there had been a lot of spawns and I had seen as many as 20 babies when I did counts. I knew there should be more and that there were a number at an inch or more.

I just finished catching kids in the right half of the tank. I can report the following fish count by size. Anything smaller than 3/4 of an inch is considered a fry:
Fry : 15
0.75: 16
1.00: 7
1.25: 5
1.50: 4
1.75: 2
Tot: 49

Add the 17 to that and the current total is 66.

Now I have to go back to work and put the right side back together and chase down the fry in the left half of the tank. This is where most of the spawns have actually occurred.

It is about 5 hours later and things have been nuts. There were 71 babies in the left half of the tank. I could not add any more to the 33L so I had to restart a 20L and use the empty 20L on the terrace. I also returned 25-30 of the smallest fry to the breeder tank. 51 of them were 1 inch or less.

The total is 137 give or take a few. These are the slowest growing Hypans I have kept. I am going to have to rethink my whole pleco set-up because when summer ends the terrace tanks have to be shut down.

I have a camera full of pictures and am way too tired to look at them.

[TwoTankAmin]

I am going nuts. We got hit by lightning and lost a cable box, a TV and 1/2 of our router. I have been running around getting new equip and hooking it up. I spent all day Sat. into the night pulling the fry from the 173 breeding tank. I had to send somebody pictures so I can post some stuff re that now.

Here is the tank before i began pulling it apart

I inserted a poret foam sheet in the middle of the tank where the Poret cube is above. That allowed me to breakdown the tank in halves. Here are pics from the right half. This one shows two of the adults and some fry.

Here is the third adult in that half

Here are some pics of the kids. I cannot attach the final pic so it will got into another post.

I will make another post for the left half

[TwoTankAmin]

In case folks do not knpo this, if you click on any of the pics, you can see a bigger version.

Here is the final right side pic. It is all of the fry in a shoebox.

Noe for the left half of the tank. because there were so many more fry in the tank than I could have imagined, I worked late into the night to finish up. So, I took fewer pics. Sorry.

I only got one pic of an adult worth showing.

173leftsideadult1.jpg (30.04 KiB) Viewed 12411 times

Now for some kids pics including the shoebox of them all.

I still owe you all pics of the various breeder tanks and other offspring. I will get them posted but it may take a while. Real life keeps intruding so I am moving slow.

[TwoTankAmin]

A quick note with no pics.

I had pulled a cave with an RB Line L236 dad on wigglers to half of a divided 33 gal. long. The fry were out a few days ago and today I returned the cave and dad to the breeder tank and did maint. and a water change on the 33 gal. I had seen only two fry so far, so I decided to see if there were more by putting in a cube of frozen BBS. I was soon able to spot at least six fry.

Yesterday I pulled two pairs of TR L236 from each half of a 20L on the terrace and returned them to the breeder tank. After a couple of weeks they had never been in the cave together. The proven trio from this group and at least 7 fry are doing great.

[TwoTankAmin]

Sorry no pics, still in camera, busy as heck. Yesterday I had trappings in both the WC 173 and the second group of 236 tanks. Today the 236 cave is empty by it appears as if there is an ongoing spawn in for the 173. Both are in the cave and he is vibrating.

I also have begun to bring outdoor fish inside. The nighttime temps will hit low 50s on and off over the next two weeks. I shipped out 26 of the largest 173 offspring and this made some room to bring inside the 21 babies I had parked outside in a 20L.

I also have a buyer for the reverse trio of the second group 236 so I got a head count on fry. 14 fish .5 to 1 inch TL. I need to wait for the smallest fry to get big enough to ship before I can send them.

If I have things set up right, the above sale and likely one more in process sale will be the final time I personally ship fish directly to buyers.

I really need to get pics up sorry all. But I could use an I.D. on the plant eating monster. It is bigger than a golf ball now,

(edited to change gold ball to golf ball. DOH)

[TwoTankAmin]

Quick fly through of a few tanks just now.

-Zebra tank, nada.
-TR 236 tank, two dads on fresh eggs.
-WC L173 tank, no spawn, but looking very spawnerish. Top two males back in their cave and at least one fat fm lurking.
-TR 236 reverse trio being held with 14 fry- moved inside and one male now caved.

[TwoTankAmin]

I must apologize for having stopped posting in this thread, but two days after the above post I had a heart attack and 5 days later I had bypass surgery. I am just now getting back close to normal. I do have a few observations about what went on in my tanks over the past 11 weeks or so.

The first two issues I worried about were feeding and water changes. My brother was able to feed but I had him using flakes and kensfish.com mini sinking sticks. I was able to give him numbers on the sticks and a decent description on flake amounts. Only tanks with fry got fed daily, the rest got fed every 3 days to minimize the work. A couple of nice folks in my fish club, one a friend and the other almost a stranger, came and helped out a couple of times each. So the tanks got water changes and filter rinsing every 3 weeks and the fish in the terrace tabks got brought inside. I am now doing the maint. work, but it takes more time than usual.

Now for the interesting part. I figured that the reduced maint. and the use of lower quality food fed less often would have a negative impact on spawning and the survival of the very young fry in tanks. I was half wrong. Even as I was losing the smallest fry, my breeders were still spawning. For the first week+ home I did nothing tank/fishwise save feed the same fway as I had my brother doing. That was when I discovered new fry in the TR 173 tank and both L236 tanks. About three weeks ago I spotted new fry in the WC 173 tank and over the weekend the alpha male released his most recent brood from his cave. I cannot say if there have been spawns in some of other tanks. I was not allowed to bend over for a few weeks which made it impossible to do a real inspection of any of my six under tanks which are for breeding or growing out plecos.

I am just about back to where I can start breaking down and putting tanks back together to determine what I still have. When I went into the hospital I had almost 200 assorted pleco fry with a number being one month or less free swimming.

[bekateen]

Yikes! Regardless of the delay, I'm grateful you're still here. Happy Thanksgiving

[TwoTankAmin]

Under the heading of better later than never. Here are pics of some of offspring from my second group of L236. 13 went into a terrace grow tank and then the reverse trio and their 14 assorted fry went into another. These pics are of the 13.

[bekateen]

They are beautiful, TTA. You are a wizard.

Cheers, Eric

[TwoTankAmin]

TY @bekateen

But the truth is I have amazing well water and I try to feed my fish well and give them a decent set-up. The rest I chalk up to good luck and great advice along the way.

Got through the RB 236 breeder tank yesterday/ I removed 11 fry to the grow space giving me a total of 24. I redid the breeder tank adding a thin layer of sand to it. Since it has a matten filter, I added a clear plastic corner bead to the bottom to prevent the sand from getting pulled in. Sorry, but I shot no pictures. What I do have on my PC are the pics I shot of the second group of 173 and their offspring. I will get them posted in the next few days.

In another half hour or so I am going to see what is up in the 173b breeder tank. These fish are on the short list to go out. I am finally beginning my downsizing project. This will leave me just the WC 173 breeder tank to do this weekend.

[TwoTankAmin]

The final WC 173 count is in- 36 fry in the breeder tank. They are 1/2 to 1+ inch. I had about 30 in there before I went out of service for a couple of months. Since about 2/3 of the above babies were about 1/2 inch, they had to have been born pretty recently. This means I had to have lost a bunch from the original count but gained back enough to more than replace them. I had left the smallest babies in the breeder tank when I did the original count and rehoming this past summer. The total number of offspring of all sizes now is 126 plus the 6 larger (2 inch avg.) I kept for myself to watch grow into adults.

[TwoTankAmin]

Once again I am under the heading of better later than never. Here are the pics of the 11 tank raised breeder group of L173 and their offspring at the time. Since I took these pics I have had several more spawns from this group. Almost any time I go into the room where this tank is, I see a number of smaller fry out. If it is feeding time and I drop in food, I see more. I have been able to count at least 10 on several occasions. As a wise mentor once taught me. "If you see a few fry, you can bet there are a bunch more out of sight."

Breeders

Kids

(see post below for one more Kids pic.

On another note, if you have a crazy amount of money burning a hole in your pocket, you win the lottery or come into a bunch of cash, this breeding group will be for sale in the not too distant future. I am in my pre-planned process of getting down to but a single tank over the next several years. The goal is to have only my big tank and clown loaches as my final tank and for this to happen by the end of 2023

[TwoTankAmin]

Kids second pic.

[sedimentaryBear]

Thank you @TwoTankAmin for posting this thread! As a novice cat keeper, it is really amazing to see how veterans in the hobby set up their systems and breed various species.

Also, I hope your recovery is going smoothly and that you are still having fun with your plecos!

Best,
Ben