Farlowella cats

All posts regarding the care and breeding of these catfishes from South America.
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Harden61
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Farlowella cats

Post by Harden61 »

I hope I am in the right forum. I have a pair of Farlowella cats that have spawned 4 times in the last two months. I tried to raise one batch of the fry in a seperate tank. They seemed to do well for about two weeks and then they all suddenly died. We were feeding them a processed seaweed and they were noted to be doing what appeared to be eating this. We now have another batch of eggs that we plan on leaving in the tank with the parents. Has anyone had any success with these that could offer some suggestions. We were thinking that maybe the seaweed contained to much iodine???? for them. They seemed to be doing so well and had actually grown.
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Post by Silurus »

You might want to read this.
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bernt
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Post by bernt »

I started a thread about feeding Farlowella fry in December, which you can read here.
I ended up using a two-litres plastic container that I left floating in another aquarium. Here I added an air stone and about 10 centimetres of water (four inches). I did this twice, one time with unhatched eggs and one time with newly hatched fry. The first time I added some snails to the container that cleaned the eggs until they hatched. You can read about it in the link over. The second time I removed the fry from the father right after they hatched.
Anyway, when I had the fry and an air stone in the container I fed the fry twice every day. I used finely crunched Wardly shrimp sticks. The food polluted the water badly, so I had to change water a few hours after every feeding. I just poured the old water into the tank where the plastic container floated, and added new water from the same tank. Easy job, took me only two minutes. I changed water in the main tank once a week. This way I managed to have nearly 100 percent survival rate on the fry. This was until I moved to a new house, and I couldnâ??t change water so often, so half of the youngsters died.
Today, the rest of the youngsters are in my 375-liter community tank together with their parents. They are now eating anything the parents will eat, and are problem free. They have grown to seven centimetres (about three inches).
I must say that it was a nice experience to breed these guys. After five spawns I finally managed to find a way to feed the fry. In all the other ways I tried the fry were sitting on the same spot on the glass until they starved to death. I think this experience have made me a better aquarist :D
My Farlowella-pair havenâ??t been breeding since January, so I wonder if they can be season breeders? Of course, as I wrote I have been moving to another house, so they have been a little bit neglected. Right now Iâ??m feeding my pair well, so maybe they will have another romance after the summer.

Hope this helps.

- Bernt -
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