PlanetCatfish.com

I'm going to buy 3 L-46 zebras(1 Male and 2 Female) and these are gonna be my first zebras. I have some questions about the tank setup and breeding.

I've read too many articles about the tank setup and breeding of this fish. But they all say different things.


1-) http://www.zebrapleco.com/article2.php

For example in this article it says about lowering the temperature and raise the waterflow and flash a camera to make a lightning effect. I also thought about using a filter like this to make a rain effect:



But most of the articles say the water temperature should be raised. This is where I get confused about temperature. Should it be raised or lowered?

If it should be lowered, this article tells "make them think the rainy season has just ended, and they will spawn.". So the temperature should be first lowered, waterflow raised (flashes etc. anything to make them think the rain season came, and maybe rise of the water level too) and then rise the temperature and lower the waterflow to make them think the season ended. Did I understood correctly?(My English is a bit bad)


2-) Should i take the fries to another tank or a fry trap after all of them used their yolk sack. Is there a risk about being eaten by other zebras?

3-) Round rocks or pierced rocks? Should they be dark colored rocks?

4-) Black sand or natural yellow/white colored sand?

5-) I currently have malawi cichlids(Pseudotropheus Demasoni and Iödotropheus) so I'll set up a new tank. I'm thinking about 60-80 liters. Is it enough for 1 male and 2 females? If enough or not, what should be the dimensions(cm if possible)?

6-) It says "make one cave per male" in some articles. But it says put too many hiding places and caves in some articles. Which one you recommend?

7-) I also want to put some plants. Which plants they have in their habitat?

8- And what are your tank dimensions and filtering/flowing equipments(to make opinion about the waterflow) ?

NOTE: About my setup/layout related questions, the main object of setting up this tank is breeding.


I've asked too many questions but it's a very expensive fish you know And sorry for my bad English.

Thanks.

I would recommend a simpler approach.
Give your L46 their own tank and maintain the temps around 82-84dF. Make regular water changes. Then skip a few of them and resume water changes at a slightly higher rate than routine.

They will spawn if they are all viable breeders.
Leave the fry in the breeding tank and remove them after they have tripled or quadrupled their size. The breeders wont harm them. Feed high protein foods, frozen bloodworms and live blackworms plus good prepared foods.

It really isn't necessary to go to the extreme lengths of recreating lightening storms. They will breed on there own with litle more than routine care when they are ready.

Whilst this is probably better discussed at the Zebrapleco site, as that's a site dedicated to ONLY (or at least mainly) that species, I'll try to answer as best as I can:

Before anything else, can I just suggest that if you haven't kept/bred any other loricariidae, start with something that is a bit easier to breed and keep. The common bristlenose is a good starting point . If you accidentally mismanage the spawn of one of those, you need to wait perhaps a month before you have another spawn to care for. H. zebra can take a year before the next spawn. Also, you can learn how to stop/start a spawn by changing the temperature with these fishes, which is good practice for the harder to bred species.

1) I doubt very much that lightning (flash) will have much effect at 10-15m of rather turbid water. Barometric pressure, temperature changes and such will be much more effective and reflective of the natural weather-conditions. [1]

The normal procedure for Loricariidae breeding is to do simulate dry season followed by rainy season. This means: warm water, low circulation, poor oxygen levels, poor water quality, high conductivity to make dry season, then cooler water, high circulation, better oxygen levels, good water quality, lower conductivity. All of these are "relative to normal keeping conditions". So for example, if you normally keep the fish at 28'C, you'd raise the temperature to 30'C for dry season, then drop to 26'C for the rainy season, then slowly returning to 28'C as the "end of rainy season".

2) In general, for most Loricariidae, the fry are safe in the tank as long as there's no other fish in the tank that will eat the fry. H. zebra definitely is a "safe" parent.

3) As long as the rocks aren't dangerously sharp, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Colour shouldn't make too much of a difference either. You probably don't want excessive lighting, but someone who wrote an article about H. zebra in practical fishkeeping about a year back had them in a planted tank, so I guess "anything goes".

4) Again, this is probably a personal choice.

5) I'd probably aim for a tank that is at least 80 x 30 x 30 cm. Bottom area is more important than depth, as the fish obviously breeds reasonably well far from it's native depth (they live in quite deep water, 10-15 meter deep).

6) You MUST have a cave for the male. Having more than one cave will:
a) make the it more likely that the male will find a cave he's happy with.
b) give the female(s) someplace to hide.

7) At the depth these fish live, there are certainly no plants. You may find some plants at the edge of the water or floating plants in places along the river, but from what I understand, Rio Xingu is not a "green" river except when it floods and the water runs onto fields/forest that is surrounding the river (and that's obviously not really aquatic vegetation).

8) I don't own any H. zebra. If I did, I'd probably put them in one of my stock-tanks of 120 x 45 x 30 cm (L x W x H). I'd aim for filtration that gives around 8-10x turnover rate (e.g. 2000l/h in a 200l tank).



[1] This reminds me of a story of a man who had a box on a stage. He sprinkled some bird-food into the box, and pulled away a curtain at the front of the cage. In the box, there's pigeons. One is jumping around in a circle with it's left wing held up, another is pecking at the side it's cage, a third one is flapping it's wings. That is what they were doing when the food arrived, so they continue to do that in the hope that more food will fall from above! This was told to me as a sign of "if you do something when trying to make something work, you can't be sure if it's what you did, or it just happened to work anyways".

Good call, Mat,
ZebraPleco.com slipped my mind.

Thanks for all replies. I'll go out to buy the aquarium and other things tomorrow. I'm keeping 4 Ancistrus in my malawi fry aquariums but haven't bred any before. Starting with zebras is a hard thing but i believe i can make them breed.

I first posted this topic on Zebrapleco.com. After a day with no replies, i posted here and got replies immediately. Thanks again.

I'm sure you would eventually get a response. Maybe you just caught them when their hands were full of laundry baskets of cash?

apistomaster wrote:I'm sure you would eventually get a response. Maybe you just caught them when their hands were full of laundry baskets of cash?

Yeah. And gold can always be found at the end of the rainbow...

If you want to get rich, then you should probably try to find a different way than breeding H. zebra, in my opinion. Yes, you get a decent amount for each baby, but unless you stump up a HUGE amount of money for multiple breeding colonies, they aren't going to produce enough fry to make you rich.

I would also suggest to the original poster that it's a good idea to try to breed the Ancistrus first - they are EASY in comparison, and if that's successfully, it's a good starting point. If it's not successfull, it's probably best to succed on the "walking" before "running" step.

--
Mats

If you want to get rich, then you should probably try to find a different way than breeding H. zebra, in my opinion. Yes, you get a decent amount for each baby, but unless you stump up a HUGE amount of money for multiple breeding colonies, they aren't going to produce enough fry to make you rich.

It seems odd, that given the sums of money involved, H. zebra isn't being mass produced in the far east or Czech Republic via hormone injection.

Maybe it just takes too long for a female to become gravid and there are too few fry at the end.

racoll wrote:

If you want to get rich, then you should probably try to find a different way than breeding H. zebra, in my opinion. Yes, you get a decent amount for each baby, but unless you stump up a HUGE amount of money for multiple breeding colonies, they aren't going to produce enough fry to make you rich.

It seems odd, that given the sums of money involved, H. zebra isn't being mass produced in the far east or Czech Republic via hormone injection.

Maybe it just takes too long for a female to become gravid and there are too few fry at the end.

It's probably more the growth-rate of the young that matters. It takes them roughly a year to reach 1", which is where they sell as "small juvenile".

I also don't think there's THAT much market for them unless prices are comparable to the many other Hypancistrus species available, which means around 25-50 pounds (50-100 USD) for a near-adult size. There are certainly some enthusiasts that will pay more for H. zebra than anything else, but to many people, it's still too much money to pay 50-100 pounds (100-200 USD) for a small fish that will take a couple of years to reach mature size - even if it's the most beautiful they've seen.

The female getting gravid can probably be sorted by hormone injections too, but the growth-rate of the young is probably more difficult to "fix up".

I don't know, I'm just making this up as I go along.

--
Mats

Mat,
Which end of the rainbow should I search?

apistomaster wrote:Mat,
Which end of the rainbow should I search?

The opposite of where you are when you find the first one!

--
Mats

I guess I'll just settle for my pet L177 Gold Nugget.
Actually I live in a gold rich State where one can pan gold if the fly fishing is off. It's even better across the border into the streams of Idaho. I know people who even make a living doing it here.

apistomaster wrote:I guess I'll just settle for my pet L177 Gold Nugget.
Actually I live in a gold rich State where one can pan gold if the fly fishing is off. It's even better across the border into the streams of Idaho. I know people who even make a living doing it here.

That's too bad. But maybe when you get more experience with pleco breeding, you can one day try to breed zebra pleco.
I really like the things posted in this thread. Especially from MatsP.
Even with the high price. Zebra pleco is not a profitable species to breed. Even with a very prolific pair, you'll get around 50 - 80 fry per year.
If I choose for example, a pair of king tiger pleco. I get around 30 - 50 per batch. In a year, I get around at least 200 fry ...