Peckoltia lineola breeding project - spawned, but...

[bekateen]

Picking up from this thread
Medical help for new Peckoltia lineola, we're now beyond medication in QT and onto spawning efforts:

Peckoltia lineola

were trapping again yesterday, for the fourth time since late April, but no spawn yet.

Look at this female's genital papilla. Is she ready to go or what?!?

Hopefully soon.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

For a while now, these

Peckoltia lineola

have been trapping on-and-off, but no spawn yet. This interaction comes after 48 hours of what I think was nearly constant trapping. He had just backed out of the cave and then she came out too. He isn't about to lose his chance.

Soon, please...

Cheers, Eric

Peckoltia lineola trapping but no spawn yet

[bekateen]

These

Peckoltia lineola

have been trapping on and off since April (sometimes both females with males on the same day), but not one spawn yet.

The females seem to be very ripe with eggs. I don't want to call them fat, but I've had to buy Spandex caves.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Success! ... but not.

First spawn of my

Peckoltia lineola

occurred between Friday night and Sunday morning. Dad has a few eggs in his cave, but they don't look good. The yolks are solid yellow color.

Also, the tank looks like it exploded with eggs outside his cave. He was actually kicking some out of his cave when I discovered him today, and there were a dozen or more eggs scattered nearby, many of them partially disintegrated, all of them with solid yellow colored yolks.

So specifically, this spawn was a failure. But bigger picture, I think it was a great success. The females have been trapping on and off for almost 4 months without a spawn. The females were huge (still are big). I suspect their eggs were old and nonviable before being oviposited. But... now they have shown they can do it, so I hope they'll do it again, next time with good eggs.

Final note, while one dad sits on some bad eggs, another dad in the cave nearby is trapping a female.

Cheers, Eric

[Baardman]

Any news on the other pair that was trapping?

[bekateen]

As of bedtime last night, they were still trapping.

[bekateen]

Any news on the other pair that was trapping?

Still trapping today at 12:00 noon too.

Cheers, Eric

[fishguy1978]

Are those blood worms in the glass dish?

[bekateen]

Are those blood worms in the glass dish?

Yes. I put a small ramekin bowl or similar glass dish (I purchase them at thrift stores, usually for about 25-50 cents each) in each pleco tank and I add a few large pieces of gravel or very small cobblestones to each. I add the worms to the bowl so that the worms don't spread out into the sand so quickly.

The worms fill in between the gravel and don't escape the bowl as easily, and the big plecos can't just come in and suck all the worms out at once. This leaves worms for smaller plecos to get access to after the big plecos are done eating, and baby plecos can move in between and under the rocks to get to the hidden worms.

As long as the worms aren't all eaten at once, they can live in the bowl indefinitely and allow the plecos to come and snack on them at leisure.

Cheers, Eric

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Yes. I put a small ramekin bowl or similar glass dish (I purchase them at thrift stores, usually for about 25-50 cents each) in each pleco tank and I add a few large pieces of gravel or very small cobblestones to each. I add the worms to the bowl so that the worms don't spread out into the sand so quickly.

The worms fill in between the gravel and don't escape the bowl as easily, and the big plecos can't just come in and suck all the worms out at once. This leaves worms for smaller plecos to get access to after the big plecos are done eating, and baby plecos can move in between and under the rocks to get to the hidden worms.

As long as the worms aren't all eaten at once, they can live in the bowl indefinitely and allow the plecos to come and snack on them at leisure.

Brilliant, simple, but effective.

cheers Darrel

[bekateen]

Finally, one of the

Peckoltia lineola

females spawned properly, instead of exploding bad eggs all over the the tank. And these eggs look good.

I had been experimenting with TDS lately, increasing the proportion of RO water to tap water from 50%-50%, to 67-33 to 76-24 and finally to 84%-16% (resulting TDS about 37ppm). After a few days of this, I did a 70% water change and brought the TDS back up to 50ppm. And two days later they spawned.

This spawn happened overnight last night (Aug 22 pm to 23 am) and on the same night my

Dekeyseria picta

L052 spawned again in the adjacent tank.

Meanwhile, my second female lineola has been trapped by a male yesterday and today. I'd love to expect a second lineola spawn soon, but these fish have been trapping on and off since April, so the fact they're trapping doesn't give me great confidence. Also, the continuous trapping throughout does not tell me whether the TDS fluctuations I tried made any difference or if they were coincidental.

#OneSpawnAtATime

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Here's the female and a random male (this male may not have been involved in the spawn):

[bekateen]

Dang. Eggs are gone today. I don't see them in the tank. Maybe he ate them... or if he cast them out, then someone else ate them.

[Baardman]

At least they spawned buddy. I have faith in you, you will succeed

[BaraCats]

That's a shame! Great to know they are spawning, sometimes it can take a few tries! Best of luck with the next batches!

[pointpleco]

I just had the same thing happen about 5 days ago, although i didn't see caving or trapping they just did it overnight. They spawned then kicked them out. They looked viable golden eggs but overnight in the Ziss tumbler they turned milky pastel yellow and later in the day were mouldy.
Being it was their first time it doesn't bother me. But good signs they will breed again soon. I have a group of 10 so lots of potential.
Good luck with your next spawn.

[bekateen]

Thanks guys. Yeah, I know it'll work eventually. But it's the eventually that is a pain.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Had two females trapping on and off at the same time for the last few days. Today while at work one pair spawned.

This is the third clutch of eggs. The first was an utter failure (scrambled eggs, literally), the second clutch disappeared after a day or two, presumably eaten. Let's see if this goes better. Fingers crossed and hands together.

Cheers, Eric

[CoryWally]

Fingers crossed Eric. My experiences have been OK with Peckoltia males guarding their eggs as they should. To the point where I haven't needed to remove them at all in many cases, leaving fry to raise 'naturally' in the tank.

I hope your male has learned to look after them by now.

Cheers,
Mark.

[bekateen]

Thanks, Mark. Let's hope so.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Dang! Day 5 of incubation. I arrive at work to find one egg precariously dangling on the rim of dad's cave. Worse yet, I can see dad still has a pile of eggs in front of him, but I also see he's got a lot of empty egg cases. Has he been eating or breaking eggs?

Five hours later, I discover dad kicked half of the remaining eggs out of the cave. So I setup a fry basket, retrieve the loose eggs (two of which have hatched, prematurely I suspect) and I dump the remaining eggs out of dad's cave. Including the premie hatchlings, I recovered 19 eggs and about again as many empty egg cases.

Why are these fish so challenged when it comes to spawning?!?

Hopefully the remaining eggs survive.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

From the 19 eggs, about 8-10 eggs hatched in total (including the two premies). Of those hatched, 5 wigglers were alive on 22-Oct, and by yesterday (24 Oct), I saw only 4 wigglers alive and okay. There are others that look dead or nearly so.

[bekateen]

Update on Peckoltia lineola fry. I have five total fry, now about 1.5 weeks post hatching. Three look normal, but oddly two have missing/deformed tails. I suspect the tail problem is related to time of hatching (you may recall some hatched days early) or due to trauma as eggs were kicked out of caves (or did dad eject bad eggs?). Anyway, here are pictures of two normal fry and one deformed fry.

Hopefully the next spawn yields better results.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Video update of the Peckoltia lineola fry. The healthy fry look nothing like what I expected based on their color pattern.

Cheers, Eric

Peckoltia lineola fry 16 days old

[bekateen]

Three weeks old, 21 mm SL. I've got three fry in this healthy condition and two which have deformities: one has a deformed tail and stubby caudal peduncle, and the other has a stubby peduncle but no tail. Still, it's nice to have gotten any at all.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Peckoltia lineola

fry are now almost 6 weeks old. The three healthy fry are growing well, but the tailless fry (visible on the leaf, bottom center, to left of rock) has not grown (but at least it's still alive).

An interesting color pattern has emerged on the heads of the healthy fry. It's a 5-point fork projecting backwards from the eyes to the dorsal spine, with the "tines" of the fork converging as they extend posteriorly. In front of the eyes, across the base of the fork there are more diverging lines extending forward down onto the snout, face and cheeks below the eyes.

These fish are colored unlike any plecos I've spawned before. It's fascinating to watch their colors develop.

Parents are trapping again. It would be nice to get more eggs to work with.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Update: Both females are being trapped right now, for a few days. Hopefully another spawn will come off that.. two would be awesome.

Fry from the last spawn are now about 7 weeks old and 27-28mm SL. One of the healthy fry got out of the basket, following the escape of the fry with the deformed tail.

Here are the two healthy fry still in the basket. I didn't photograph the tailless fry in the basket yesterday.

[bekateen]

The five- prong fork is developing. The central mark down the snout is becoming two parallel lines. That split was emerging on younger fry, but those are relatively faint lines and a little broken so it was harder to see in younger fish. Also, the line that crosses through the eyes splits into an upside down Y below each eye. Finally, the area between the eyes is turning into a dark blotch. That was also evident in younger fish, but was more ambiguous then.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

On a confirmational point, there was concern when I first got my fish that the adults might be L205, since their faces were so spotted. The adults' identity as P. lineola was confirmed by Daniel Konn-Vetterlein and Nathan Lujan.

Now looking at my fry, nearly 2 months old, and comparing them to the 2-month old L205 juvies pictured in the CLOG (https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/im ... ge_id=8765) confirms that my fish are not L205. The head coloration couldn't be more different between the two species at this age.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Nearly 3 months old, now the largest is at least 35mm SL. Water turbulence makes measuring difficult.

Parents trapping on and off for weeks, but no spawns since late October.

Cheers, Eric