L24 Advice. Gender and aquascape

[Proteus]

Hey everyone.


Heres background: Pulled the trigger from my favorite importer and skipped the growing out plecos to breed like I used to do. Obtained a 12-13" L24 as an early xmas gift for myself. Might have bit more than I chew this time around not planning wisely for temporary housing and factoring in the cats in this household.

Now found out over the weekend: have no more fish play money to feed into this hobby. Losing a roomie that helped fund my hobby in the last few months. Yeah gotta look for another one so my big 6-8 foot acrylic tank project is now on hold. Being a homeowner priorities have to happen first.

Was going to drag in the 100g stock tub into the basment then realized my 2 challenges were the bengal and fat DSH orange cat will be trying to flip any lid off making this an impossible task. Back then when I had stock tubs I had cats that didnt care. And the house was set up differently.

Anyone who owns a bengal knows they like to stick their arm in everything including your feet while taking a bath! Fishing for plants and have succeeded in my 10 gallon 3 foot by 12 inch wide circular vase. This is a very difficult and challenging cat ever of owning cats.

So ended up tearing apart my 112g tank moving everyone else to the 75g with the jaguar catfish growouts. 3x L114s (i put them up for sale on a local fish group page) 4xL264s.

My primary question: what gender is it more likely? Or is it still too young even if its that big?

It has avoided the 4" pvc cave i set out for it. Orginally was for the clown loach growouts. Rainbow shark is enjoying it now.

Should I create some type of cave for it so it like a tile shelf and plug in a powerhead underneath the shelf so it can be more comfortable? I am feeling bad it is clunky in that tank. The tank is 18 inches deep.

Planning on going to home depot or menards to find a tile and super glue them together is the slate tiles there fish safe?

I uprooted alot of the plants in there so it could have more real estate to swim and chill around in. I really like its personality. Very observant and swims up to the front when I walk into the room!

[Proteus]

Forgot I started this thread still have not done a tile shelf system trying to get more feel of how trapped she would be if i did a huge shelf system.

This gal Im thinking a girl Im still debating on what name to give her thats unisex if I get the gender wrong. She has learned how to utilize the 4 way pvc pipe. Very fascinating fish it did feel like a month that I have had it but looking at my records its really 3 weeks tomorrow. Its entire body/tail went over the 12" ruler I had on hand and I couldnt find the tape measure. So eyeballed it at 13" maybe 14" that does not include the streamers.

Im still unsteady on how much I should be feeding this one and not overload the tank with ammonia after feedings. I scored an used eheim professionel 3 canister filter. Its not yet tested im definitely putting it in the tank she is in once i get it up and running. I let the hornworts, water sprite and water lettuce float on top choking the surface. To give it extra filteration in the mere small 112g tank. Been doing 25% every other day. Before it was every 2-3 day routine.

She definitely let me know how she thinks of my decoration. Shes constantly digging sand pits and kicking back sand at corner of the tank knocking out my prefilters of the AC110s. Constantly moving the her little hideout the 4 corner pvc around mostly spins it around so she can look at where she wants to be looking at it does give her some security so she can eat in peace. She will grab shrimp or scallops greedily go back into her hideaway and slowly munch on the protein eyeballing the other fish daring them to come into the cave. Smaller fish are naturally afraid of her and the cave she is in so they dont dare try their luck.

If its sticks or wafers thats dropped in she will just nibble on them out in the open not caring if other quicker fish steal them away. Im trying to gauge how much to give her. Always have had commons growing up this size and I really never cared to make sure they got the nutrition they needed. Now we know better vs the 80s and 90s even early 2000s. When i last owned a common. Really entertaining.

I also learned the L114 growouts is SO MUCH more active in the jaguar catfish 75g grow out! Showing off their fins constantly and strutting their stuff the L264s. Its much more caves and network of hideaway.

Fascinating working it out themselves.

To my disappointment i did not save a picture of how the 112g tank looked like today before I headed off to work

But heres the 75g tank can see one of the L114s tail very clear in the bottom middle part and the L264 left of it. The biggest jaguar catfish is sticking out of bottom right cave while you can spot the head of one of the 5 smaller original jaguar cats I got in. Was feeding them quick snack of bloodworms. It was more reinforcement training for the two fire eel growouts. Thats their favorite treat.

[Proteus]

Working on rigging up shelf with epoxy this week and finding out where strainer and spray bar of the Fx4 went so I can move majority of the fish to other tank.

Posting up before pictures of what the 5 foot long tank looks like before shelves go up shes the one causing all sand pits vals are now mowed down for sure no more bottom level plants just hornwort sprites and floaters as the golden wonder lillies decided to have babies so it was painstakingly hard to try to throw out old decaying plants without exposing them I decided to move babies to the 20g tank with smudgespot cory catfish whatever I could catch went there.

Hopefully she enjoys the shelves more giving her more levels to explore. Since it's a taller tank. Gives her more sq footage. I feel like a crap owner not upgrading her into a bigger footprint home sooner than later. I got the room in my basement just gotta wait now with no more roomie income on top of my job income so many house expenses as a homeowner.