PlanetCatfish.com

hey guys at our canberra aquarists society (CDAS)
a member came up to me and was offering some L136 to give to me to see if i can breed them
he said that he got these fish 2 years ago
i want a positive id so i can do mroe research how to keep these fish and if i can keep them in a certain tank etc.
they look nothing like the ones in the catelog
i think they might be a normal L104/panaque maccus

Certainly not . Yes, they are (L104) - although there are some variations on that theme, they are pretty much the same thing anyways, and hard to differentiate unless you know where they are from.

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Mats

thanks for the quick reply mats
could these fish possibly hybridize with L397?
or can a few go into a 60 litre tank bearing in mind that they are fully grown


but this is the tank i was planing to put them in
Fluval vicenza 180
2xL397 4cm both
2xL071 1 is about 8cm other is 4cm
1 kribensis

how many could i put in?
he says he thinks they all might be females-but i was thinking he didnt condition them right
judging by the photo of them, i think the photo'd ones are males

I personally wouldn't hold them with L397, but a 60 liter tank is a bit on the small side - possible, but my 100 liter tank is WAY messy with 3 of these in.

Not sure if they are males and females - hard to say from the pictures...

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Mats

thanks for anpother quick reply!!
could i ask why wouldnt you hold them in the same tank? hybridizaion? fighting? or just the mess they make?
i always do weekly changes of 35 percent-its easy for me because i have a hose just 10 meters away from the tank
and i plan to get rid of the kribensis soon to another tank

I just think that they are similar fish, and they will want the same food (mostly wood), and they can be a bit territorial (but they site together in my tank). I don't think either is very easy to breed, so hybridization is less of an issue...

Big and frequent water changes with a good vacuuming will keep the dirt down to some extent, but they just produce massive amounts of "sawdust" - mine looks like it's snowed, except the "snow" is almost black...

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Mats

ok thanks for the replies today
so the main issue here is the mass amount of waste they produce
so if i do plan to get them (but i really want them ) i would need to vacuum the tank really well and have good filteration
i have fluval canister but i dont know what type just the number is 204 but i could always get more internal filters
how many could i keep though? i could put them in my 217 litre tank but that is alreayd a handful with cory and bn fry
i will show a picture of the tank in just a few minutes first of all need picture

here is the tank there is alot of wood in the planted area but my plecs seem to like the big piece on to the right handside of the tank
the tank gets alot of sun at the back and i have no algae eaters so my dad used one of our 2009 christian calenders as a background

The fish liking the big piece of mopani doesn't surprise me at all...

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Mats

MatsP wrote:The fish liking the big piece of mopani doesn't surprise me at all...

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Mats

what exactly do you mean by that? and is that mopani wood (the big one) i wasnt really thinking mopani because it doesnt look like any mopani i have at all

and i talked to my parents and they said i can get them
how many could i get? the person from cdas even offered his 2 foot tank he has that he keeps around a 3 in-but my parents said no more tanks until i leave the house!! but i told them the profit i could get from these fish in australia!!

The mopani is the wood on the left-hand side of the photo (on top of the caves) - although you say right, so perhaps I'm confused. At least, it looks like mopani to me, with the dark side and a light side.

Somehow, I don't think, even in Australia, these fishes are a "get rich quick" scheme. I've had mine for about 5 years now, and they haven't spawned more than twice, and no fry yet. Ok, so maybe I'm not working them that great, but I'd say (common captive bred) Ancistrus are the only fish that are easy enough to make any money from on any form of scale - and even then it's tough competition from commercial breeders.

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Mats

after reading the catelog i know that they are not easy to breed but thats just an excuse i use on my parents to get me these fish
and in australia they are bloody expensive
but also after readign the catelog i dont think i can do 2 months without water changes

how many could i get btw?

I wouldn't keep more than three in a 60 liter tank. And I wouldn't go two months without water changes either... ;)

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Mats

MatsP wrote:I wouldn't keep more than three in a 60 liter tank. And I wouldn't go two months without water changes either... ;)

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Mats

oh btw the tank above is my juwel vicenza 180
so could i perhaps keep 5 or 6
im thinking 6 is just pushing it

Sure, you can hold 6 in a 180 liter tank. Will need to clean the filter quite often tho.

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Mats

okay thanks!
here is what the person who is willign to give me said what he new about breeding them
but this procedure he talks about is way too much for me!!

Heres what I know on breeding these ... Get them healthy and in good condition... make sure that have fast moving water and I mean like real fast....They will use a hole in wood.... so the wood needs to have lots of caves...
OK, so set up and ready to go, you then drop the temp to like 20, 22 ... (another thing about plecs.. they can take pretty cold conditions) leave them in the cold water for a few weeks/ months, and no, to very little water changes and let as much evaporate as you can...you wanna get that water acid man... Then.. when you think they are ready, you do a big water change, so like pull out 50 to 80% of whats in there and change it... at the same time whack the water temp back up to say 24 to 26 the first day then, You then do like 20% water changes for 2 or 3 days and each time put the temp up a little.. so say 2 deg each day for 2 more days till you get it up to 28, 30... Because you need to get the temps down for a while when starting, you want to be doing all this when it's perhaps a little cooler .. that way you can regulate the temps yourself a bit better.....

how did you breed them mats?

Mine just bred by themselves. I've had the male and the female "cuddling" in the cave MANY times, but no eggs. I haven't done anything extreme like that tho'.

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Mats

I'm more familiar with brumating reptiles than fish, and I've never kept Panaque myself, but in a lot of species sperm production is triggered by a lowering of the temp for a while. So lowering the temp and letting the water acidify (adding oak leaves or other tannin rich leaves works well too) may due the trick other than just letting the water turn to muck. You can still filter the water if you add the acidity atrificially with leaves, or I have even seen a "black water" additive on the market as well. Do water changes too to remove nitrates and nitrites, but with a lower temp they should be metabolising at a slower rate and therefore should be producing less waste.

After a month or so ( I'd say 2 to be safe) bring them back up to temp and slowly reduce the acidity with each water change. This should stimulate courtship and breeding by shocking their little brain stems into thinging "Hey the environment is back to optimal, let make babies before the water turns crappy again!".

Like I said though, I have no exp with Panaque. My Pterygoplichthys multiradiatus have survived a similar brumation I put them through, but I have all females so I can't comment on mating success. I just wanted to see if there would be any harm and how they would fair, plus South American rivers are never as perfect as aquarium coditions and the have evolved to survive and thrive in all the coditions these rivers throw at them.

Good luck with attempt and let us all know how it goes.

hey
thanks for the reply-that actually makes alot of sense!
could i make the tank acidic by just addding some wood?

I don't see why not. it would depend on the wood, though. you want to make sure its not toxic to the fish. I'm not very familiar with Australian trees unfortunately. i know what Melaleuca is though and that funny Wollembi pine. You may want to ask around. In the States and Europe oak leaves work really well. Oak wood is high in tannins also, so you could use that if available. Its what they used to tann leather with, hence the name.

Just don't use anything to lower the pH for a swimming pool, obviously. You may try a bit of vinegar if all else fails. the tank will smell funny, but it is acetic acid. I used to use it in tanks with mata-mata turtles, until I heard about oak leaves.

Most rivers in the amazon region are full of decaying leaves and some look like rivers of tea.

you can also search other sites for people that break fish from acidic, or boggy, waters. The only one i can think of off the top of my head at 1:30am is Betta splendens and other wild type bettas.

Good luck to you.
Eric

While the above techniques are definitely worth a try, bear one thing in mind:

Not performing water changes, and messing about with temperature and pH, is a good way to end up with dead fish.

I would keep them for at least 12 months at 26C in regular tapwater with frequent water changes to first get them in good condition, and in a fit state to be interfered with. Also remember that P. maccus is not a blackwater fish, so you won't need to go far below 7 to recreate a realistic scenario.

I wouldn't add acids either. With lots of wood in the tank, just skipping on the water changes should be enough to drop the pH, depending on how hard your tapwater is to start with.

Good luck.

If the tap-water is hard, using RO/Distilled/Rain water will help lower the pH. Lowering pH on hard water is difficult.

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Mats