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A replied a few days ago but for some reason my reply disappeared. Anyway, I'm so sorry to hear about your white albino. Maybe the cave was too small and she could not escape from the male. Hopefully you can find them again at your local fish store.

Thanks for your support. As to cave size, I don't think the cave was too small in an absolute sense, because I've already had three spawns in that tank inside the same cave (a 1" diameter bamboo pipe, 5 inches long/deep), all since February 16th, and my white female is the smaller of my two females. So either this same white female used the tube successfully before, or the larger yellow female used the tube successfully.

However, I think the cave may have been to small or too confining for her if the male was being aggressive with her, or if he trapped her and she wasn't ready to spawn... Is that even possible? Will a female enter a male's cave if the female isn't ready to spawn? Yesterday I placed my larger, yellow female back in the tank, and just as a precaution, at the same time I removed the bamboo cave and added a 1.5" diameter black plastic pipe to replace it. Let's see if the fish like that.

Cheers, Eric

I have a lot of extra caves in my tank and mostly just the males use them. Females don't seem to sleep inside caves even when the cave is empty. On rare occasions I have seen females alone inside a cave but in general I get the sense that the females don't use caves as sleeping quarters unless there is no where else dark/dim to hide. My females almost always sleep on or near my sponge filters during the day and they (females) fight each other for space on the sponges.

mattcham wrote:Females don't seem to sleep inside caves even when the cave is empty. On rare occasions I have seen females alone inside a cave but in general I get the sense that the females don't use caves as sleeping quarters unless there is no where else dark/dim to hide. My females almost always sleep on or near my sponge filters during the day and they (females) fight each other for space on the sponges.

That's my experience with my ABN females too. I never see them staying in caves alone, and mine also prefer to hide under or between the foam blocks of my sponge filters. (I say "they" in reference to the time when I had two females... now I have only one, and "she" does this all the time).

Cheers, Eric

I was at Petco today and they had albino plecos that are snow white (not yellow). I would have purchased some but I have my hands full at the moment. My yellow albino long finned plecos spawned 3 weeks ago and I have about 80 fry at the moment. Perhaps the next generation I'll try to cross the offspring with some snow whites with the goal of producing long finned snow white albinos (as opposed to yellow albinos). The problem with such a cross is that 100% of the fry might end up being brown, and another generation will be needed to find some long finned snow white albinos (only 12% yield).

You can see some of my pleco fry on youtube. They are only 0.5 inch long and they are already yellow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_shPyubff8

That's good to hear. At least the snow whites are still available.