PlanetCatfish.com

Hello everyone,
I'm a new member to this forum. I have a question about my 2 ancistrus. I don't actually know what ancistrus species they are. I got them from a lfs and was hoping they were a pair. Which I have now confirmation for as they have laid eggs.

Right, I have a 200Litre tank with black roman gravel, some live plants, some bogwood and some ornaments, a sunken ship and half a tree log, for the plecos to hide in. I keep the temperature between 26 and 27C or 79-81F. I also have a bubble wall in this tank.
The tank has been running for about 4-5 months. Apart from the 2 ancistrus we don't know what they are, we also have 11 rummy nose tetras and 2 L182, golddust bristlenose plecos, which are only about 6 months old, in this tank, as well as 2 khuli loaches. The 2 unknown plecos , the male is about 15cm or 6 inches long, the female is only about 10cm or 4 inches long. we've had them about 6 months now.
About two months or so ago we've had a problem with whitespot which ended up killing 9 of my 10 rummy nose tetras. We then had some 0.5 ammonia in the tank. During this time my male bristlenose developed some fungus so I removed him from the 200L tank and put him in my quarantine tank and treated him.
The ammonia has now all gone and we have added another 10 rummy nose tetra (after quarantining them) so now there's 11 rummys in the tank. We added the male bristlenose back into the 200L tank on 31st of August and as soon as we added him he moved into the ornament ship, we then noticed how the female kept going to the ship. So we were waiting for something to happen. The visits from the female stopped on the 5th of September and during the day we caught the male moving around inside the ship with a bunch of little yellow eggs attached to his mouth. So we are pretty sure that they were laid during the night from the 4th to the 5th of September. So now we've been waiting to see some wigglers in the tank, but we didn't see any until yesterday. I kept looking in the tank yesterday and finally found some. There were 5 egg shells, two of which were already empty (couldn't find those two wigglers though) and 3 that still had a baby in. So I moved them in a floating breeding tank (betta show case) and just after I had moved them in the 3 eggs hatched right in front of my eyes.
I added a airstone to the floating tank and the 3 little ones seem to be doing fine.
I am now wondering, since I haven't seen any more than those 3, should I turn the ship over and look wether there are more and remove them or should I just wait for them to come out by themselves. I am just a bit worried that they might not be able to find their way out of the ship and/or that they might not get enough oxygen.
Any advice, or what you think I should do? As you might have guessed by now, this is my first spawn.
So any advice or comments are very welcome and appreciated.
Thank you all ahead of time and I am sorry if this is such a long post, I just didn't want to leave anything out.
hope to hear from someone soon, Marion

ps.: I attched a picture of the proud dad on the day that he decided to move the eggs around.

If possible, leave the eggs with the dad. If you remove the eggs, put them in a breeding box in the same tank with a small airstone on gentle flow of air.

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Mats

Hi, thanks for your quick reply.
the thing is, some of the eggs have already hatched, ie the 3 that I've already moved into a breeding box. So, do you think the other eggs haven't hatched yet? or do you think they have hatched but just haven't come out of the ship yet? If you think they are already hatched should I just leave them until they leave the ship themselves? Wouldn't it be safer for the babies to be in a breeding box, where I can keep an eye on them?
sorry for all the questions.
thanks again, Marion

The father will care for the eggs until the fry are brown and the egg-sack is gone (and maybe then some), so they will not "come out" for another few days, I'd expect. About 2 weeks or so from spawning.

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Mats

right, thank you so much for your help.
i feel a bit better now.
so thanks again, Marion

I agree, leave to eggs alone, the male will look after them.
Some time Ancistrus can spawn totally un notived. The first thing you know about it is when you see small ones swimming about the tank.
Male ancistrus are very good fathers.

what should I do with the 3 wigglers that I found outside the ship, which I put in the breeding box? should I try and put them back into the ship? or should I keep them in the breeding box? what is their survival chance without dad?

They will be fine in the breeding box - it is likely that dad will not care for them once they are "lost", so you are just disrupting things for little gain. Make sure there's a gentle flow of water/air through the breeder box tho'.

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Mats