Scleromystax barbatus

[maddog10]

Just thought I would share a couple of photos of Scleromystax barbatus.
Hopefully I can update with egg/fry photos in the future (fingers crossed).

Male


Female

[cmstwc]

very nice fish!! I love your pictures! I would love to keep some of these, but I guess they are not so cheap. Hope they will spawn for you soon!

[Bas Pels]

I have seen them being offered in NL for 5 euros - than 5 us $, now a bit more

not too expensive, but they do require cold water, and a lot of current

[Noorphish]

Beautiful fish and excelent pictures. Are you a professional photographer?

[Kampfer]

Beautiful!... The white gravel really makes the fishes stand out too. great photography too:)

[maddog10]

Thanks!

Not a professional, just like to take photos.

I keep them in the mid to low 70's F. Water changes can drop the temp about 6 degrees depending on how large a change I make.

[corydoras]

My barbatus spawned on a weekly basis at 66-68F, they really are a cold cory. In my experience they do not last more than a few weeks above 76F. I had to keep them in a tank on the floor of the fish house to get them through the summer in the UK and considering our usually bad summers, that is extreme.

Matt

[maddog10]

Got my first batch of eggs last night. This is surprising to me as my pH is 9.1 (yes 9.1) and the temperture is 75º F. How long before the eggs 'should' hatch?

[hoplo]

Hi Maddog10,

Great pictures and congratulation on your first spawning.

We keep ours at temp about 73-78f and they breed every week like clock work.

We have 5 males and 4 female in a 2 foot x 12" x 12" tank.

We have the young dotted round the fish house in various tanks, with temps up to 82f, last summer 85f was the highest temp and all our Barbatus did ok with non of them dieing.

It takes about 4-6 days for our eggs to hatch, we put ours in a little show tank with a few red ramshorn snails, they eat any bad eggs and leave the good eggs alone. When hatched we don't feed them for a couple of days, until their belly's are empty and they appear to have a little colouration, a line near their eye. Then we feed them live newly hatched brine shrimp. When they are about 2 weeks old we put them into other tanks that have baby corys or pectorale in, that are about the same size.

Vicky. xx

[maddog10]

Thanks for the info!

[maddog10]

Ended up with 23 eggs. About half of them fungused over last night. I caught one of the males eating the eggs this morning. There were only 5 eggs left and they were fungused.

Better luck next time. Next time I will take half the eggs and put them in a separate tank.