Ideas wanted for inducing spawning of Erethistes jerdoni?

[Catfish-ologist]

Hello All,

I recently attended Catfish Cataclysm and decided to purchase some Erethistes jerdoni. I currently have 13 of these fish and am interested in spawning them. They are currently in a 6 gallon cube aquarium. About 1/3 of the tank is planted, 1/3 rock caves, and the remaining 1/3 is super fine sand with leaf litter and cholla wood. The water parameters (RODI water) are: 74 deg F, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 5-10 nitrates, pH ~6.8.

I know that there is a spawning report in Shane's World->Reproduction titled Spawning Erethistes jerdoni. Does anyone have ideas on what to try which might induce spawning in this species?

These little guys seem to LOVE frozen blood worms. Mine aren't interested in any prepared foods. I did surprise them last night with a small taste of Rod's Food Original Blend frozen food. They loved it!!! I'd also like ideas of any foods that also might help induce spawning.

Lastly, the common name for this species is quite accurate, however, I prefer to call them Dwayne as in Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. When they swim around the tank, they remind me of an airplane because of their shape. I have fondly nicknamed them all "Dwayne the Plane".


Thank you,
--Sean

By the way, I want to say thank you to the kind man at the Cataclysm whom gave me some of these cool fish I really appreciate it.

[OregonOutdoorsChris]

I don't have too much input to give, as it looks like you've already got your bases covered. They clearly like foods in as natural a state as possible, so for breeding I'd assume some sort of live food culture would be very beneficial.

If you want to see what their native habitat looks like I've found this video... Granted that looks to be E. hara or some other closely related species rather than E. jerdoni, but you get the idea.

[Jools]

Might be asking @Medaka to discuss here too - he knows a few things about these fishes.



Jools

[medaka]

There isn't a great deal more that I can add to my breeding report in Shane's World.
However; I found that conditioning on live foods such as newly hatched brineshrimp, microworm, grindal worm and small daphnids 3X daily as per report, along with good water management is a must. Also, the 'adults' have to be fully mature/grown. If memory serves me correctly it took over 12 months of TLC from purchasing them from a LFS to them reaching a size and body mass that was close if not larger than their SL. In my experience a lot of E jerdoni offered for sale in the UK are juveniles. If you view the Photographs of mine in the Catelog of the adult catfish you can get an idea of how robust they are as adults.
This male BTW was between 30mm & 35mm SL
www.planetcatfish.com/common/image.php? ... e_id=20576

ADD on:- I have a 'feeling' that there maybe two different populations/sub species of E jerdoni and if so, it may well be the case that water parameters and diet for a successful spawning may be different. Its only speculation on my part; which goes back some years, which I was unable to follow up due to a number of factors

[fishhead0103666]

If memory serves correctly I asked Msjinkzd several years ago about breeding this species and she had some information. I do not remember if it was typical run of the mill information regarding breeding or whether it was information specifically about that species she gave me but I do remember asking her about the species and getting a response.