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hallelujah!!! there is a god!!!
hope the fry survives this period!!!!!!

Absolutely superb Congratulations Haavard!

Still, having only one must be nerve racking..... Just can't afford to lose one....

Good luck on raising Uno. Like the name

Congradulations on such a hard won victory, I can only hope to be so lucky.

I'd vote for primo or stoma.

Good luck for you and 'uno'.

I've just read through this thread and am absolutley astounded by the quality of the photos, and your obvious diligence in this process.
All your tanks are outstanding, and so, it appears, are your husbandry skills
Regards, and best of luck to you and 'Uno'
Martin

Haavard,
The fry looks like it has hatched 1-2 days to early but with your care it may survive I'm sure they will breed again and that time you maybe should concider to leave the eggs with the father at least the first 5-6 days before you steel the eggs, if the father feels comfortable it would not be any risk to leave the eggs, if the father act nervous you may consider to steel the eggs earlier... not because that you feel nervous ;)

Great achivement just to get them to breed

Janne

Janne wrote:Haavard,
The fry looks like it has hatched 1-2 days to early but with your care it may survive

Can they really go 6-7 days before hatching? The eggs were laid Friday Afternoon.

Janne wrote:I'm sure they will breed again and that time you maybe should concider to leave the eggs with the father at least the first 5-6 days before you steel the eggs, if the father feels comfortable it would not be any risk to leave the eggs, if the father act nervous you may consider to steel the eggs earlier...

I generally agree about that, but I believe the eggs in this case would have been destroyed by the father within the first 24 hours since only 5 developed.

Janne wrote:not because that you feel nervous ;)

I have some trust issues regarding water quality and the males ability to care for the eggs with such high ph. I am still working on plumbing for ro water and timers to control it in my fish room. Artificial care with methylene blue takes out bacteria and fungus. When I have had good healthy eggs from my L200s I have had good success with the technique.

Janne wrote:Great achivement just to get them to breed
Janne

They are just horny fish doing their thing

Uno is one day old Sorry about the picture quality, but I won`t disturb him again till tomorrow.

Haavard this story makes wonderful reading and the pictures are wonderful too. Thanks for sharing it all with us and good luck to you and your single child!

Haavard wrote:Can they really go 6-7 days before hatching? The eggs were laid Friday Afternoon.

Yes, you can consider 6 days from spawning to hatching as normal withing many genus of Hypostominae-Ancistrinae, even that I have had earlier hatching and different time of hatching within the same species (not this one because I have never bred them). Of all species I have bred is the average time 6 days, a few times 7 days or more correct between 6 to 7 days. I have another interesting experience too with L199 where a few eggs hatched after 2 days and another few after 3-4 days and the rest after 6 days which should be "normal"... all fry was equal developed at hatching and all of them survived? It was not only one occasion so I wonder if there are any kind of reproduction technique under certain circumstances? a few other species not so extreme like L199 have had eggs hatched on the 4 day where the fry also was normal developed like the siblings that hatched on day 6.

Haavard wrote:I have some trust issues regarding water quality and the males ability to care for the eggs with such high ph.

Norway usual have very soft water, so what is your pH and the conductivity in your tapwater? pH should not be a problem but high conductivity can cause problems depending on what cause the higher conductivity in the water, if you succeed artificial in the same type of water maybe that not is the issue... high nitrate is a much higher problems hatching eggs than wrong pH.

Janne

I don`t know why, but I assumed 5 days was a lot. Luckily I didn`t puncture the fry with my knife:) I really appreciate your advice as always

About my water.. It has high ph, low conductivity, low gh and very low kh. I am told the water company adds something to prevent the metal piping's from corroding. I will do some inquiries about exactly what they add. It must be something potent, because lowering ph without using RO is extremely difficult. About nitrates in my tanks it is very low. I have a total water-volume of 8000 liters, and change around 1000 liter a day. Nitrites and ammonia are close to none existing due to several extremely large sump systems for biological filtration.

Haavard Stoere wrote:It must be something potent, because lowering ph without using RO is extremely difficult.

And pretty pointless, as whatever the pH change is done by, will almost certainly also change the conductivity, and often also KH/GH and/or introduce other "not so nice" things, such as phosphate. RO is the only way to go.

--
Mats

They use calcium carbonate. Around 3000 kgs every 24 hour. The water is delivered to 260 000 people. Every person uses around 430 liters (sounds like a lot. Maybe they have a leakage. Maybe the leakage is me).

We therefore have 11180000 liters of water containing 3000 kg of calcium carbonate. That should be like 2.54 grams of chalk pr. liter. Sounds like a lot, and might be the reason why lowering ph is so difficult.

My conclusion is that the amount of calcium carbonate used is the same as the amount of millimeters pr. inch x10. Strange These guys must have built the pyramides Bastards!!!

There must be something wrong in this calculation, because 2.54 g/l is 2540 mg/l = 2540 ppm, and that would put it WAY beyond rock-hard on the hardness scale. We have a TDS value of about 350 ppm, and that is about 250-300 ppm of CaCO3. Your EC should be about 5000 if that was right (probably a bit lower, as it doesn't follow entirely linearly at that high levels).

I recalculated it in Excel, and got 0.0268 g/l = 26.8 mg/l = 26.8 ppm. Which makes a lot more sense.

And I think one reason you got it wrong is that you missed a zero of the end of the total volume: 111800000, not 11180000.

Should be fairly harmless to the fish, in my opinion.

--
Mats

The calcium carbonate I think is to make the water more stable and more human friendly, but they probably use natriumhydroxide (soda) to increase the pH which is what they use in Sweden. They may also have start to use the same method like us, instead of chlor they make chloramin to prevent bacteria growth. In any case the pH should not be so difficult to lower if you prepare the water 1-2 days before use, a few drops of a strong acid in your case maybe 0,5-1 dl for 1000 L will give a chemical reaction with both the calcium carbonate and the natriumhydroxide... end product will be carbondioxide. The carbondioxide is easy to get rid of using aireation or a powerhead within a couple of hours, you seems to like making experiments so if you use a 10 L bucket and add a certain amounts (ml) of acid and arieate the water for one hour, meassure the pH, if not satisfied add a few ml more and make the same procedure, when you are happy the water has a low pH but a little higher conductivity... depending how much of the calcium carbonate and natriumhydroxide you have to get rid of to reach your goal depends on the amount of acid you need, and if you not need so much acid the conductivity will be reasonable high. The large part of this conductivity is mostly in form of natrium, very little calcium and magnesium, the buffer will be weak but if you change so much water like you say this will not be a problem, the problem will be to store the amount of water you need ;)

A larger RO-unit makes life easier if the water not are acceptable from the tap, you will need a quite large "bucket" anyway to store the water you produce... the advantage is that you take away all the crap in the water and you can "create" more or less exactly that kind of water you want.


Janne

I agree, adding strong acid, such as hydrochloric or sulphuric acid will neutralize CaCO3 or NaOH (Sodiumhydroxide). But the consequence will be that you get calciumchloride or calciumsulphate in the water. Which isn't bad, but it will still contribute to the conductivity, where RO water will have extremely low conductivity - and it's much easier to add something to the water to make the water higher in conductivity (including adding tap/RO-waste-water as a part mix).

--
Mats

A larger RO unit seems to be the way forward. I currently produce only 300 lpd. Also I need to preheat the water a few degrees before it enters my fishroom to prevent condensated water from dripping of the unit and all the lines.

Haavard,
In Norway they always rebuild the hospitals all the time (rich country ;) and there you can find a really good and larger RO-unit quite cheap... almost for free, they normaly throw them in the garbage when changing to new ones. For your purpose even with a older membrane (they change the membrane every year) it will reach for your lifetime, you can find sizes from 30 L/h up too 5000 L/day. That was how I got my first RO-unit and it still works in Brazil, they are of much higher quality than the ones you find in the aquarium shops and you can chose exactly the conductivity you want to produce in the lower scale or just zero µS if you want to add your own mix of salts.

Janne

Janne wrote: That was how I got my first RO-unit and it still works in Brazil, they are of much higher quality than the ones you find in the aquarium shops and you can chose exactly the conductivity you want to produce in the lower scale or just zero µS if you want to add your own mix of salts.

I had no idea that hospitas use this. Is your unit still working with the same membrane after all that time??

Todays update:

Haavard Stoere wrote: Todays update:

look at that sucker!

Congrads Haavard(once more)!

Thank you:) He is beginning to look like a proper pleco. I don`t want to stress him to much, so I will not photograph him daily (photographing means transfer to phototank and back).

Haavard wrote:I had no idea that hospitas use this. Is your unit still working with the same membrane after all that time??

All laboratories, and units on hospitals using dialyse use RO-units and other electric ion exchangers etc. Even the universities use large amounts of RO-water and have their own pure water systems, the quality of the water depends on the purpose but it starts with pure water and ends with extremely pure water. I had an accident with my first membrane but for aquarium purpose and a profesional RO-unit with automatic backwash, 2-3 times a year you clean the membrane putting chlorine tablets in the prefilter and run the unit (this water you dont use) the membrane will hold for your purpose many many years. The membrane they use for these RO's is very expensive and also of very high quality, labs and hospitals has to change membrane frequently due to their very high demands of really pure water and high water production, different purpose has different demands. I have been working within this field construct and built large pure water systems for the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals etc. the knowledge from these years is really good to have today ;)

The fry looks good, today it looks like it's 2 days old from normal hatching, I suppose the eggs would have hatched last thursday so you can count the days backwards until they spawn to find out the normal time before hatching.

Janne

I will definetely change my Aquamedic s600 with an industrial unit when I get the chance. Thanks

Uno:

such a nice picture, well done!

the pigmentation is already showing! and those spines behind the head, what in gods name is that?

Uno is a lovely little sucker!

If Uno only knew the excitement he/she is generating

DutchFry wrote:such a nice picture, well done!

the pigmentation is already showing! and those spines behind the head, what in gods name is that?

Uno is a lovely little sucker!

Thank you Since I consider myself to be amongst friends I have stopped cleaning dust and dirt from my pictures.

About the spines... I don`t know, but I suppose they should be there?

Those spines might turn out to be really important. I mean, new genus important.

Jools

Haavard,
If possible document the spines on the fry with pictures until the day they drop off or dissapear, youngsters nor adults don't have these visible not even as a "bumb" under the skin like Leporacanthicus species. Then next time you get fry and even these shows the same type of spines... would be very interesting

Janne

Unfortunately I have been missing some of my external flash connections the last few days, but here is an update from this evening:

Uno is kept in a 200 liter with L46 and L240 fry. He already measures 21mm and he is eating. I give him spirulina flakes, crushed peas and earthworm sticks.

That is really great news! Glad to see he is doing well

uno looks great!
the spikes give him a very "cool" touch

He's looking great