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After 55 years in the hobby and raising a few thousand fish of various species every year I usually am able to figure out the answers to my own problems.But sometimes some one has answers to save you the losses that you have trying to figure things out.
Early in January my King Tigers kicked out a clutch of eggs that they had just spawned the night before. I had no problems until it was time for them to start feeding. From the sixty fry I am down to about 4. I treated them the same as my L-201 Inspectors of which I raise 100% of their spawnings. As a first food they get live newly hatched baby brine shrimp and after a few days get moved to a 10 gallon tank. As soon as I started to feed the tigers they started to die in spite of them getting two water changes a day from the parents tank. I moved them to a 10 gallon tank and the deaths continued. I now have a second spawning 40 still in the hatching bowl and eating newly hatched shrimp. Should they be started on something else? I am nervous about moving them to a tank soon. I do have six three inches long from a spawning in October that stayed in the parents tank. They are at 85 degrees and feeding. The first ones did not apear to feed.

Are you keeping the spawning bowls and 10 gallon tanks at 85? Mine wouldn't breed at temperatures less than 82 and seem much happier at 84-85, so I would assume the fry also like it warmer.

Steve

If your fish spat out sixty fry, then they are most definitely not L-66.

fishfarmer wrote:Are you keeping the spawning bowls and 10 gallon tanks at 85? Mine wouldn't breed at temperatures less than 82 and seem much happier at 84-85, so I would assume the fry also like it warmer.

Steve

All tanks and bowls run at 84 to 86.

Jon wrote:If your fish spat out sixty fry, then they are most definitely not L-66.

My fish are L-66. I feed my fish heavily with mysis shrimp. They are 6" long and at least 3 years old.
My L-201 have had as many as 31 fry in a spawning.
Some people have told me that they only have 6.
Healthy well fed fish produce big spawnings.

Are your 66s wild caught or a F generation? Was the January spawn their 1st? How about some pics?

Hi Bwhiskered,

Like Barbie said, I've had similiar problems with my L333 and L287(L399/L400). This only is occuring with one group. I have another group of L333 and L340(L399/340)that does not have this problem. I am still working on trying to figure out what the problem is. If you should find out before me please share your experience. At the moment I've adjusted my hardness to 6dH and pH of 6.5 in those tanks and I've already lost the next batch of L287 and waiting on the L333 eggs to develop as the male is tending to them at the moment.

Ken

I haven't been successful with spawning my L66 yet but I have been feeding them earthworm pellets which they seem to prefer over many other foods I use except live blackworms. Do you suppose that chopped live blackworms would be worth trying on some of them to see if that makes a difference in survival rates? I don't know that it would make any difference it's just that mine seem to like them a lot and maybe so would their fry.

Hi Larry,

In my case the Fry still has their yolk. Color and pattern are developed but maybe 4 or 5 days from starting on solid foods. All my other fry from other spawns love earthworm sticks, spirulina sticks, Frozen cyclopeeze, Frzn baby brine, and Frzn daphnia.

Thanks

Ken

Hi Ken,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I just started buying and using earthworm flakes and pellets last Spring but they have proven to be a great addition to the diets of many of the fish I raise. It is one of those foods that seems to to be "rib sticking"good.
Of course the Corydoras and my Plecos have taken to it but where it has been surprisingly good is for discus.
I have been a fish reeder for 40 years so bewhiskered has a head start on me but discus have been part of my
regulars for nearly all that time. I have'nt been making up beefheart blends nearly as much as did before discovering the utility of earthworm pellets. One of the most important projects to me is my attempt to raise a group of ten Heckels in hopes of breeding them. They and the tank raised discus both have accepted the E. pellets as a staple food. It really is well suited to types of fish that prefer to eat a little constantly or are grazers. My Heckels have become thick bodied and grown from 3 inches to almost 5 inches in diameter sice May of last year. It has worked well as a food for raising Corydoras sterbai and Ancistrus sp.3 which are examples of fish that do better if able to graze at will rather than feeding bbs a couple times a day. Of course, variety is always important in fish nutrition so I offer other prepared, frozen and live food.

"My fish are L-66. I feed my fish heavily with mysis shrimp. They are 6" long and at least 3 years old.
My L-201 have had as many as 31 fry in a spawning.
Some people have told me that they only have 6.
Healthy well fed fish produce big spawnings."

The fish must be healthy and well fed to begin, given the onset of female gravity. I feed my fish (L-316, 270, 66, 333) three times a day with a mixture of fava bean paste, mysis or plankton mix, and bloodworm, and none of them, not even my largest L-333 female, at 5" ish, along with her only suitor, a 6" male, has ever hit more than 30 viable fry (a few more eggs, but some inevitably go infertile when I hand raise). The smaller species (270s, 316) produce anywhere from 20-25. Breeders of larger hypancistrus generally report anywhere from 20-40 eggs...I have not heard of any such spawnings in which the number exceeded or went well below those numbers by, say, 20. I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that it doesn't seem right, and given the number of spawns I've pulled from my L-66 thus far (already thrice this year, 6 the last, and 4 the year prior to that---they went on a hiatus in '06), along with my other hypancistrus, I can say for certain that this is certainly not in the norm. Perhaps you miscounted? Any pics?


As for the actual problem at hand, perhaps you'd want to let the male try his turn at raising the fry. Under his care, broods are almost always larger and more successful

Hi Jon,
I'm sure bewhiskered can speak for himself if he feels like responding to you but as another one of the "old ones" I do have some thoughts.
i. Their are many pitfalls to inductive reasoning; example Let's say all the cows you have ever seen are black, does not prove that other colors of cows don't exist, no matter how many cows YOU have seen.
2. Plecos are still not identified correctly buy any current system. There is room to doubt whether you, I, or bewhiskered have L66. We probably do but not with 100%. I have 40 years experience and bewhiskered 55 in breeding a very large number of species. I started breeding wild discus at 17 and I'm 55. People had to see my accomplisments before they could believe I truly raised discus. Let alone one spawn of 174 from a pair of wild browns. That, if you don't already know, is much larger number of fry than many discus breeders have ever seen, even today when breeding discus is more frequent. Again that was from wild fish which are still more challenging to breed than the domestic discus.
My point with this part is that the breeding and raising the L### plecos is still a relatively infrequent occurence and the knowledge base is in it's infancy. One cannot yet say what is impossible or even unlikely in any authritive way just yet.
3 When you have been raising and breeding challenging fish for 40 or 55 years there really isn't any incentive in trying to prove how successful one is to others. Been there, done it, don't care what other's think. It becomes a mature POV that you have accomplished success with a given project for the personal satisfaction. I find more and more that the young following in our footsteps are more concerned with these things and to present themselves as authorities on subjects that are still in the pioneer stage. I have no idea how old you are but when it comes to two things I care about it is what a geezer has to say about flyfishing for trout and breeding tropical fish. 40 or 55 years of experience is hard to comprehend until you've been there. By that much time one has had a chance to see many things that don't fall neatly into common experience.

Kenneth Wong wrote:Hi Bwhiskered,

Like Barbie said, I've had similiar problems with my L333 and L287(L399/L400). This only is occuring with one group. I have another group of L333 and L340(L399/340)that does not have this problem. I am still working on trying to figure out what the problem is. If you should find out before me please share your experience. At the moment I've adjusted my hardness to 6dH and pH of 6.5 in those tanks and I've already lost the next batch of L287 and waiting on the L333 eggs to develop as the male is tending to them at the moment.

Ken

My L-66 are two pairs from 3 different wild shipments.
They turned out as 2 pairs. They have spawned on several previous occasions but only once a few fry were found. Of the first clutch only one egg had a dead embryo. The second spawn a week later from the second pair started to hatch and a fry or two was kicked out so it was removed. All but ten eggs hatched. Unlike the first spawn they are feeding. I lost three a few days ago so I went to a larger bowl. That is where I'll keep them until they are a little bigger and stronger. There appears to be about 50.
The reason for good hatches may be that plecos are sensitve to chemicals so I treated their water with European Black Alder Cones as a fungus preventer. It seems to have worked.

I'm not familiar with that fungus preventor, but the label of Kordon Methylene Blue states, "Methylene blue has been determined to be detrimental to biological filtration, causing a cessation of nitrification resulting in a rapid rise in ammonia and/or nitrite levels..." If you only using sponge filtration, could this be the problem?

I have the same problem with my 66´s.
The ting that i´v notise is that death usually accure right they have been feed.
It seems like they sufficate.
Someone with the same experience?

alenate wrote:I have the same problem with my 66´s.
The ting that i´v notise is that death usually accure right they have been feed.
It seems like they sufficate.
Someone with the same experience?

When I come up with an answer to the problem I will post it.

"My fry were left with the male and he had no greater success rate with them than I was having when I pulled them just prior to leaving the cave. "

In said instance, the male has pretty much done all the egg raising. I was referring to hatching the clutch without the male. It, of course, likely differs between indivdual experiences, but I've found the male's constant pruning and care to be unrivalled.


Also, to the topic creator: I wish you luck with future spawns.