Ancistrus sp. Rio Ucayali spawned. :-)

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There's going to be well over 100 babies here, maybe close to 150.

Cheers, Eric

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UPDATE: Since I first got these

Ancistrus sp`rio_ucayali`

, they've spawned at least 10 times. My first spawn resulted in 2 fry, (but only 1 developed to subadult size). On the third or fourth spawn, I got about 45 fry to hatch and develop. A few spawns later, I got about 140-145 fry from a single spawn... All the other spawns (all large spawns) either failed completely or only a few (less than 10) fry hatched... Most spawns failed completely, not by fungusing but just failing to develop (the eggs would just turn opaque and then disintegrate).

Someone suggested that my temperature (80-82F) was cooking the eggs, so I lowered the temp to 76F. Since then I've had two spawns: The first spawn at this new temperature was taken from dad on day 1 and raised in a Cobalt egg tumbler. The eggs started to develop but didn't hatch (none). This week there was another spawn. I left it with dad to fan the eggs. No failed eggs I could see (says Yoda ) (I mean none turned opaque)... At least 150 fry hatched! At this cooler temperature, time to hatch extended from 3 days (at 82F) to 5 days (@76F). The significance of this is that I've ALWAYS seen at least some eggs (minimum 20-25%) fail and turn opaque. This time I saw NONE! Dang, I'm going to try this again! Maybe cooler temperature and dad fanning is the secret to success.

Hands clasped and fingers crossed!
Cheers, Eric

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P.S., this is occurring all still in a 15 gallons tank. I've got 13x 5" SL adults and close to 100 fry in this tank. The negative impacts of overcrowding are minimized by frequent (2x weekly) 70%-80% water changes.

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Developing nicely!

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Just sharing - a nicely posed adult female, estimated SL about 10cm.

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Nice to see many striving fry
How are they doing now?

82°F is still pretty low temperature for it's habitat. Wouldn't expect that to be a major problem. If you had enough successfull spawns at this temperature I would love to see a control experiment on higher temps again.

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These fry are doing well, but I suspect I've lost a number for various reasons. I let them go into the parent tank relatively early in their development (maybe a week or two after hatching). Normally, I leave fry in a fry basket for up to 3 months. But there were other issues at play in my life, so I needed to let them go early. I haven't torn down the tank since then to count the remaining fry, but at any given moment it doesn't seem like enough fry are there - maybe they're just hiding well.

As for raising the temp again (from 76F back up to 82F), that will happen naturally this spring as temps rise again. Unheated, the temp will easily exceed 80F and may even hit 85F. We'll see what happens this Spring/Summer.

Cheers, Eric

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Fun picture of a mature male staring me down.

Cheers, Eric

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Had to clean out parents' tank today, after four spawns in one month. Somewhere around 400 babies swimming around (most in a growout tank and fry basket), in addition to about 30 2"-3" juvies (12 I took to LFS today). I need more tanks.

Sharing updated photos of a mature male and female Ancistrus sp. Rio Ucayali photographed in sunlight. The male is almost black with hints of red on pectoral spines and dorsal fin (not visible here); his silvery spots are pinpoint, irregularly edged, but crisply bounded. The female's orange-red fins show well; her iridescent body spots are larger and more diffuse. This is the same female that was all mottled orange as a juvenile on the day of purchase. She has always looked different from the other females when her colors are evident.

Cheers, Eric

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Today when I took the photos of the adult male and female Ancistrus sp. Rio Ucayali, I was struck by how different their spots can look. Here are two photos of a subadult offspring after tank lights are off (one pic with flash, one without). You can see simultaneously both the smaller distinctly-edged, pinpoint silver spots of the adult male and the larger diffusely-edged irregular iridescent spots seen on the adult female. I'm surprised to see this because I expected them to be the same spots. Maybe not?

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Aside: Back in June I got rid of all the parents and was growing out the fry to sell/trade. Some fry are still pretty small, but a few are adult sized, and one pair spawned around Dec 6th. Then today, this happened:

New Year's Day sexy action! One male, two females, all within a timespan of 3 hours!

Happy new year, Eric

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Within hours of the second spawn, dad lost one of the egg masses. Into a hatchery fry basket it goes.

Dad still has the other egg mass.

Cheers, Eric

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Here's a summary video of the double header spawn in my tank yesterday. These three parents are only about 6-8 months old. I hatched them in my tanks late last Spring or early in the Summer of 2019! That was fast!

Cheers, Eric

Ancistrus sp. Rio Ucayali: 1 male, 2 females, 2 spawns in 4 hours! New Year's Day, 2020

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It's been a while since anything happened with these. After that onslaught of spawns in early 2020, I sold off or gave all the adults and fry back to the LFS where I first got them because I was overwhelmed with hundreds of babies.

... or so I thought I got rid of all of them. A while later, on a thorough cleaning of the tank, I found 4 or 5 small individuals who had gone undetected. I moved them to another tank to grow out. I thought I had all females, but later I was able to find one showing bristles growing up the snout, a male. But he looked like a whimpy male since his bristles were so small. The group sat in a 15 gal tank for months but no spawns occurred. So a few months ago I moved them, along with my remaining Panaqolus albomaculatus and some Dianema longibarbis and Corydoras(ln9) sterbai to a 75 gallon tank in my workplace greenhouse. Currently, the tank is suffering from a green alga bloom. I can't see squat inside the tank.

There's fish in there somewhere, I swear there is. :-D

But this morning, lo and behold!

For a few seconds I saw this on the glass... and then it swam off and I can't see it anymore. They're inside somewhere. I'm glad to finally get a spawn again, but honestly, I really wish that was a baby Panaqolus albomaculatus and not just another Ancistrus sp`Rio Ucayali`. Oh well, I'm still happy though.

Cheers, Eric

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I was starting to give up hope on these

Ancistrus sp`Rio_Ucayali`

, but they are really tough fish!

Since I moved the Rio Ucayali out to the greenhouse in late 2022, I've had maybe 3-4 spawns (March 2023 (HERE), 01 June 2023, 22 June 2023 and late August 2023). None of the March fry in the greenhouse tank were ever seen again (I presume they were killed by larger fish or just out-competed for food). When I found the summer spawns, I brought the eggs inside my lab and hatched them in breeder boxes. On each occasion, the hatch rates were poor with lots of eggs failing, but I always got some fry; however, in all three of those spawns, after a week or so of growth, all the fry would die slowly for no obvious reasons. I wondered if maybe the very hot summer conditions in the greenhouse harmed the eggs and reduced the health of the fry, even though the fry were hatched indoors.

Then in the Fall of 2023, when I moved some

Panaqolus albomaculatus

out to the greenhouse tank with Ancistrus sp. Rio Ucayali to build my group of mustard spots, a disease ravaged the tank (it's described elsewhere). I lost everything else in the tank (over 50

L397

juveniles and over 25 juvenile

Rineloricaria lanceolata

, and all but one of seven mustard spots)... but somehow five Rio Ucayali survived that disease.

Fast forward to Winter 2023, and on two separate occasions over the holiday break (about 18 December (reported HERE) and again on 01 January), power was cut to the greenhouse for different reasons, each time while I was away for 3‐4 days. On both occasions, the tank temperatures dropped to the low 40's Fahrenheit (4-7C) for days at a time. Throughout those two times, they lived at "outdoor winter" temperatures, with overnight low temperatures in the 40F range and daytime high temperatures in the 50F range.

These temperature drops killed the one remaining mustard spot and at least two Rio Ucayali, but miraculously one male and two female Rio Ucayali survived both of those traumas.

I made the difficult but obvious decision to close down the greenhouse tanks and I moved the Rio Ucayali inside to my lab. After warming them up slowly to indoor room temperature (73-74F) around 04 January, they spawned on 22 January, but the eggs were nonviable. Then a few weeks later on 05 February, they spawned again and this time the eggs hatched (about a week ago). Today on 17 February, those fry are doing well; with a little reservation, these fry are only about a week post-hatching, and that is when in recent spawns the fry started dying, so I have to watch these carefully, but so far they look good, and certainly the hatch rate was much better this time.

Also today, dad is on another new spawn! Hopefully we're back at it with these.

• 22 January spawn
  • 14 day interval
• 05 February spawn
  • 12 day interval
• 17 February spawn

Cheers, Eric

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Second clutch of eggs hatched and the previous group of fry are doing good. Not surprising, but somehow there are a few of the older fry loose in the tank too. Either dad let a few get away from him, or else a few managed to escape the German breeder ring.

Cheers, Eric

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Here's a nostalgic and fun update to these fish:

On 13 April (yesterday)... nearly 6 years to the day since my first spawn of

Ancistrus sp`Rio_Ucayali`

... I was at the Southwest Aquarium Keepers Event (SAKE) in Phoenix, Arizona. There I met an old acquaintance who bought some of my Rio Ucayali fry back in 2018 or early 2019. She had only two specimens remaining and she couldn't keep them any longer, so she wanted to give them back to me. She gave me one male and one female.

The male is a whopping 18.6cm TL/16.5cmSL and the female is still a big 12+ cm TL/ 9.5 cm SL! That ballpark 10cm SL size is pretty typical for my past adults and current largest adult, but I have never gotten any to grow so big as this monster male!

So as happy as I am to get such a big specimen, I'm more happy to get back two of my old babies, all grown up and grown up big!

Cheers,
Eric

P.S., Last week my male from my old colony spawned with what I believe was two females. He was sitting on a giant bilobed mass of eggs that was deposited at different times of day.

I expected the eggs would hatch over the weekend in my absence, so before leaving for the weekend, I took all the eggs and moved them to a German breeder rings. Today half eggs have hatched and the other half should hatch in the next day or so.