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Love this thread and thanks for sharing.
my L66 have just spawned so I am carefully following what you have done. Thanks

sl

FISHNUTS wrote:Love this thread and thanks for sharing.
my L66 have just spawned so I am carefully following what you have done. Thanks

sl

Congratulations!
Good luck with the youngsters

Hi folks,

I'm starting to question my tacktics on breeding my L66.
As I also breed corydoras I had an interresting conversation on the amount of fish is needed to get a most succesful spawn. Here some people had a small group of about 6-8 corydoras witch were very succesfull but when adding more to the group they stopped completely.

I'm thinking of trying to separate my group of 12 L66. I have one dominant male, he also has taken care all of the eggs. Ones succesful and one he failled.
The male to female ratio is about 1/3 female and 2/3 male and I'm starting to think this is just not working. So I want to devide my group and create a more succesful breeding attempt.

What I was thinking:
I take the dominant male and give him 2 heavily gravid females. My females are exploding so gravid but nothing is happening so far. I was planning to devide the tank into 2 smaller ones, the tanks are 1 meter.

What do you think is best?? I would appriciate your expert opinion

Greets and thanks in advance,
Jacqueline

I prefer setting up groups of six rather than larger spawning groups. I feel that I get higher productivity this way.

I've taken some pictures of a few juveniles today:





Haven't changed to setup yet of the adults. The male had a visitor this morning. Later he was gone again and left his female behind in the cave. I'll give it a try tomorrow. That's if he hasn't planned a romantic evening

These fish appear to be L134.

apistomaster wrote:These fish appear to be L134.

I'm sorry but you are absolutly mistaken. These are 100% L66

Perhaps you can see why I said they looked like L134.
One adult with juveniles.

Nearly every striped pleco fry or juvenile looks the same in the beginning. Specialy with the hypancistrus. That's why it is so very hard to ID a juvenile when there is no other information, like catching place.

Personaly I don't see a lot of resablemence(?) in juvenile L134 and L66 other than they both have some striping. But even the stripes are different Colloration and headshape is also complety different.

Update:

Two weeks ago I decided to split my group of 14 into 2 separate groups. After one failed spawning attempt nothing was going on anymore so I made the choise to try and give the dominant male more chanche of a succesful spawn.

I took the dominant male and gave him 2 large gravid females and 1 more submissive male. The others stayed behind to form the second group.

In the second group one of the large, I think also old male, took residence in a cave. Something he hadn't done yet, he alsways sat under a piece of rock or wood. Very busy fanning and seeming to be very happy with the new setup. He has not got eggs (yet) but the fact that he has become the dominant male of this group is incouraging. Females are showing some intrest but patience is the game her, there is a new boss.

In the first group, with the dominant male of the old setup (same male wich gave me my first fry) there has been remarkable succes. After only 2 weeks he's seduced a female last night and is now fanning a new batch of eggs Not bothered by other males I hope this time he will succeed again in producing some beautiful fry.

Maybe the conclusion is that the size of the breeding group does matter and also the ratio of male and females?? I gave him the best possible chanche with the 2 very gravid females. Not changing anything else in the tank other than separating it into 2 halfs. Feeding and water didn't change either.

Keeping fingers crossed

I prefer setting up breeding groups of 5 to 7 fish, more females than males.

Things are looking good here Dad is doing a great job again all tho he is having some trouble with the eggs and larvea this time. I took a sneek peek 2 days ago and saw a very large batch of eggs. Never seen that many As they started to hatch yesterday he knocked some out of his cave. One larvea was allready dead but the other 2 were still alive. I tried to put them back into the cave (first time I tried this) and he took them back again. But this morning there's another egg outside, haven't moved it yet. I will try to put it back later today.
I can see him wiggling in his cave trying to keep all the eggs and baby's together. He's really trying to do it right Can't wait to find out how many he is really trying to keep together. I think it could be towards 50 of them, the whole back of the cave is filled with eggs and baby's

The other half of the group hasn't changed. No spawn yet but that doesn't matter I'm very greatfull for what I have now!

Update:

Dad hasn't managed to keep all his fry in the cave so I had to put 4 into a separate container. They are doing fine. Other than that I've lost 2 more larvea with he had kicked out, they had a torn yolksack and were dead when I saw them. Since that there are no problems anymore and he is caring very well for the remaining fry in the cave. I think there were just to many inside.

Here a picture of the 5 day old fry from this last spawn. I can now monitor there growthrate, inside a cave it is to difficult to see




And one of the older fry, now 24 weeks, was happy to sit in front of the camera for a second


Greets Jacqueline

Just a little picture update of my L66
After making the choise to separate my breeding group, breeding has gone very well here. I've spawnings every 4 weeks or so. I'm very happy they are doing so well

Picture of the first spawn, now nearly 8 months old. I put some in my discus tank:



And some pictures of today. These are fry from the 3rd and 4th spawn, 4 weeks apart and still with the breeding group. The other fry have already moved to there grow up tank. One of the females in the cave.





They love courgette, or suchini (?) as you say it.

Wow, the fry and juvies look great. Yeah, over here, we call courgette "zuchinni".

wow, beautiful!

nice work jac!!

btw dont hypans arent hypans carnivorous? just thinkign because i have heard L066 hardly touch any veges

but i dont keep hypans so i cant say anything

If I don't feed my L066 juvies veggies once a week, they destroy my plants. So it seems not all Hypans are THAT carnivorous.

Very good thread. My pair of L66 have just spawned for the first time. Jac could you tell me where you got your caves from please?

Thanks everyone

I feed all my hypancistrus courgette/zuchinni once a week and they love it all. Except for my L46, they will not eat it. The hypans seem to only eat the skins, my L134 only eat the insides. But the L66 eat it all skin and inside As do also the L204.

@fish fodder, congratulations on your spawn, great news We can get these caves on order here in holland, several selling points. They are handmade.

jac wrote:But the L66 eat it all skin and inside .

if only me L104 and L397 did!
they only eat the skin and the soft middle! and leave the harder flesh

I haven't found any species of Loricaridae that will not eat earthworm and/or Spirulina sticks including their fry. This has allowed me to completely stop using any fresh parboiled or canned vegetables at ever stage of their life cycle. I get excellent growth rates and increased convenience of using fewer foods. I feed them these to L333 breeders and fry with a meat to algae ratio of about 4:1.
Each species has different preferences and I feed Zebra plecos algae sticks rarely and Peckoltia L134 do well at about the same ratio as the L333. Sturisoma fry receive more of a 7:1 ratio. The convenience of using 2 staple prepared food for adult and fry.
I do also feed them all frozen blood worms a few times each week. I strive for as simplified diets as I can and still get the desired results.

Here some pictures of the first youngsters. They are doing fine and look really stunning with there black and white markings

Pictures are taken today







And two weeks ago I collected a 100 fry out of the breeding tank. This is from 2 spawnings with 4 week in between. And he has a new brood in his cave right now. He didn't manage to keep them all inside while hatching so I have 8 fry in a separate container, doing great. I think he has a lot of fry again, maybe again about 50

Great pics. What's the pleco behind the youngster? Gold nugget (in the first pic it looks like there is a yellow tip on the fin)?

Linus_Cello wrote:Great pics. What's the pl*co behind the youngster? Gold nugget (in the first pic it looks like there is a yellow tip on the fin)?

Thanks. Yes the fish behind is a L81

Some more baby pics. Total L66 youngsters is about 200 now

In the grow-up tank together:

Very nice.

--
Mats

just beautiful! good job!

I am starting to think i might two of the same sex. no babies in several years lol.

Wow...looking great!

Thanks all