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Hi , im just wondering if anyone can give me advise on this. I may be able to get a Jewel Lido120, Jewel 260 or Fluval duo 1000. So for each one what pleco would you recomend for a beginer, plz include tank layout, feeding regime and amount of flow. Sory if i'm asking for two much!

Personally, if you have the money to get a Juwel Vision260, I'd go for the Juwel RIO300 instead - it gives MUCH more space at the bottom for another 5 cm of "width" (51 cm vs. 46 - but the vision is curved, and the "ends" is a good 7-10cm less than the middle, hence smaller capactiy and smaller bottom-space], and it costs less [at least at www.thegoldfishbowl.co.uk, which is where I got my RIO400 from].

There isn't a HUGE difference in tank-size -the RIO300 would take tiny bit bigger fish, but nothing that you'd say "Oh, if I buy this one, I can get something completely different" - all of the tanks are suitable for the smaller types of L-numbers, e.g. , , , etc. These generally stay below 20cm/8", so they are fine in either tank. There are a FEW fishes that would creep into the viable size ONLY in the RIO300. The general rule is that the tank should be at the very least 4L x 2L x 2L, which means that the max size of the fish is half the shortest side or a quarter of the longest side of the tank, whichever is smaller.

If money is tight, I'd probably spend it on the Fluval 1000 tank - I had a Fluval 800 until recently (replaced by made-to-measure tanks to fit my racks). Only slight drawback is that compared to the RIO300, the filter is a lot more maintenance - it's a good filter as long as it's kept clean. Plecos tend to make a fair bit of mess, especially if you have succeeded in breeding them and have a bunch of juveniles needing a lot of food.

For a beginner, if your goal is to breed plecos, I'd definitely recommend to start with a common - they are very easy to keep, and easy to breed. Once you've had a bit of practice with them, you can get something a bit harder to breed - (or other Sturisoma species) will test your fry-care skills, even if getting them to spawn isn't too hard. would be a good starter for the second level of skill as well.

Note that looking after the fry once the fish has spawned is part of the learning curve - so it's good to practice on fish that spawn relatively easy before you go for the "big hitters" that only spawn perhaps 15 eggs once a year - you'd be kicking yourself quite a bit if you got a spawn, and then accidentally killed the fry by some simple mistake.

Once you've mastered that, you can probably "attack" any species you like - although it is obviously easier to go after those species that have been bred by many than those that have "no breeding recorded".

As to flow-rate, caves, feeding, etc, it's fairly hard to be specific unless you have decided on the fish itself.

There are lots of breeding articles for all sorts of plecos in the Shane's World section of this web-site. Have a read of that.

Once you have decided which tank to go for, which species of fish, etc, and if you still have questions, please feel free to ask again. But it's very hard to give advice without also knowing what species (or at least genus) we are talking of.

Also, bear in mind that it's all well and good looking at the Specialancistrus unobtanious in the cat-eLog, but if your local shops can't get it, all you will ever do is look at the pictures on a web-site. For sure, ask your local shop what they can get, how much it is, etc. But if it's impossible to get hold of, then you'll have to look for alternatives. In general, fish with many keepers (listed as "k:xx", xx being a number, in the Cat-eLog listings) is easier to find than those with "k:0" or "k:2".

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Mats

Mats is spot on with his suggestion to gain experience with easy fish 1st before progressing - this is essential!

Once experiene is yours, take a look thru cat-e-log & then ask us, with people all over we can let you know if any sp. are about & probable costs.

best of luck & keep us posted

Hi again. I was planning to start with one of the Ancistrus sp as a 'experience gainer'. What I plan to is to spawn and raise the fry atleast a half dozen times, with 90% of the fry surviving, before I even attempt breeding a Hypancistrus .
Going by avalibility of species and breeding info I think I'l go with a L-260 OR L-066 once I'v gained a bit of XP?
Any ideas on a tank layout, flow direction/rate, cave size for a standard sized tank? (roughly 4x2x1.5-2ft)
BTW thx for all the hope so far!

Cave-size is roughly 1.5x the length of the fish, 1.5x widht of the fish, and 1.25x the height of the fish (with dorsal down). It's always best to give the fish a few choices, so if you are making your own caves, don't make them all the same size - make some a bit smaller, and some a bit bigger than the guideline above - you never really know which one the fish chooses...

Ancistrus don't seen particularly bothered about flow-rate, as long as the water quality is reasonably good and they get good food, they'll breed. For more demanding plecos, I'd say a turnover rate of about 5x-15x (so a 4x2x2 ft tank -> 450 liter, so somewhere aroung 1800-4500 liter per hour total flow). In my L128 breeding tank, which is about 200 liter [note: I haven't actually had the fish breed yet!], I have one 1200 lph "circulation pump" and a 1000 lph Eheim 2217 filter (and a overflow system that shares a 1200 lph pump between two tanks - but it's not pumping 1200 lph, since most of the pumping effort is put into lifting the water 6ft up from the sump - I guess it's closer to 200 lph per tank).

If there are options for tanks and such, I'd suggest you look at a smaller tank - there is no need to have a 4ft tank for a breeding group of smaller L-numbers [It's obviously different with Jools setup for breeding L253 - his fish are roughly 30 cm already]. I'd say a 2-3ft x 18" tank would be just fine. Why does it matter, I hear you say... Well, if you want to make a difference in water hardness or temperature, you will need a lot more water to change something in a bigger tank. Another reason is that you could fit 2 tanks of 2ftx2ft base area in the same space as one 4ft x 2ft tank - which you could put another species into.

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Mats

Most Hypancistrus and Peckoltia are imported as older juveniles.
What this means to your breeding plans is that you may have to wait 1 or 2 years for them to reach maturity. If you happen to buy tank raised juveniles then your wait may be 3 years.

The common Ancistrus can be bred in as little as 9 or 10 months if they have been well cared for. Certainly by 12 months a common is ready to breed. Hardly any Common Ancistrus fry die. That is why they are so common and cheap.
For some, like myself, preventing unwanted spawns is necessary. If I did not take preventative steps my tanks would be overflowing with common Ancistrus. I do like to keep them around since they are such a good utilitarian algae eater.

Hi, I'v set up my old jewel 70 as a BN breeder (bought an adult male+female so far their happily eating and seem not to mind each others company ) so now i'm been offered a preowned rio 300 n a vision 260 n i'm wanting to build up a colony of Hyspanistrus.sp . So i'v looked at the sp. list n decided that if im ganna breed anything it'l be L260, 066 or 333 unless anyone has had better experiences wit other sp.
However I want to know about how I should lay the tank out for each sp. where the caves should be placed, how much flow, optimum temp, water parameters+diet. I dont expect to find adults for sale so i'm gonna look for large juvis n raise them in the tank wit a few dithers . (if I get either tank)

I'd say all Hypancistrus species have the same requirement and are equally moderately difficult to keep, so choice of species should be whatever you fancy and can afford/find - they need good clean water, nice good flow of water, some flow going past the cave. Rocks rather than wood.

Temperature varies a bit, but generally "in the higher region" of 26-30'C - you need to have a look at the species record in the Cat-eLog.

Diet is mainly worms/crustaceans rather than vegetarian.

For a breeding setup, a 250-300 liter tank is still on the larger than needed side of things, but if that's what you want to go with, then fine - like I said, it makes dropping temperatures or dropping conductivity take a bit more water. You also need bigger pumps/filters to get the same flow-rate. On the other hand, using big tanks is positive in the sense that there is plenty of water to dilute the nitrogenous waste of the fish.

Also, if you are planning to breed the fish, I wouldn't keep multiple species/forms in the same tank. There is a chance that they breed before you think they are ready, and you may end up with hybrids - a mix of two species - we do not want this!

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Mats