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Hi! I'm planning to buy L-134 (my dream ) My question is: How many L-134's can i have in a 85 liter aquarium? I'm hoping to make a spawning-group when they get big enough, so it's just gonna be L-134 in the aquarium.

I personally have 14 adults in a 30 gallon (110 litre-ish) breeder style tank with at least 4 different spawns in the tank at any one time. If I followed the one fish per square foot rule I could have 4.5 fish. My guess is, either stick to "the rules" or over crowd to differ some agression.

I was thinking that: either 3 of them(1 male and 2 females) or 5 (2 males and 3 females). If i only buy 3, it's mabye not so great chanse to get male and females, though i bought 2 ancistrus' (chose after my openion about their sex) and got a pair Openions?

I can buy 4, and pick out one male and 2 females (if i am lucky) when they get big enough to look the diffrence. Is it possible to have 2+2? (2 males and 2 females?) Hoping for quick answer

It can be quite hard to get the right mix of sexes, but yes, getting a higher number of fish will be a good idea to make it more likely that you will get at least one female and one male. But I bought 5 , and got ALL females...

There seem to be a common scenario that there are more males than females in the shipments of these fish, so you may need to look carefully at them... It's often best to have a large number of fish to choose from, so if you can find a shop with 10+ fish in, and put them on a light-coloured background [such as putting them in a polystyrene shipping box] so you can judge the body/head-shape. Wide, blunt head is more indicative of a male. Wide body around the middle is more likely to be female.

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Mats

I asked some questions at the shop that could get them, and they are not gonna be more than 3-4 cm when they get there. They also told me that they order at least 10 when they bought them. If im early i could pick out the largest ones, but i dont know when they have them on their list, but they did hang up a note which said that i was interested, so if they see them on the list, they tell If i let them be there a week before i buy them (the fish), i dont know if i can ask them to hold off the three(or more) that i am gonna buy. If i buy them the same day, they could mabye die of stress? (answer me ) I said three to them, because I decided three, but i need some opinions.

At 3-4cm, you'd have a very hard time telling which is male or female. They would need to be about double that to have a small chance.

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Mats

If you have a chance at smaller ones, I would go with a few (3) of the big ones and 7 of the smaller ones (adjust according to budget).

alga wrote:If you have a chance at smaller ones, I would go with a few (3) of the big ones and 7 of the smaller ones (adjust according to budget).

Yes, I'd agree with something along those lines. The bigger ones in a group are more likely to be male, and the smaller more likely to be female, so having more of the smaller ones is a good idea. [This applies to Loricariidae, if you are getting Corys for example, then the smaller ones will be males - and you need about twice as many males as females in Corys!, so numbers would be about right there too].

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Mats

Well, my budget can afford 4 of them, but i'd like to know if its ok with 2+2 (2 males,2 females) or if its better with 1+2 (1 male, 2 females). Is it some other openions about how many i can have in a 85 liter aquarium? As written before, i am going to try make a breeding group.

Today I got some caves i ordered for 2 weeks ago! It's 4 of them. 13cm length, 3 cm wide and 2.5 cm high. They are going to be picked up later today

Hi

I think it would be a bad ide if you put all four caves in your tank. What you can risk if you do that, are that the male fish never vill be in a cave for som time but change from one to another all time.
What you should do, is to put one cave in your tank, and use rock and wood to create som hide for the rest of the catfish. With more than one male there will most likely be one Alfa male and one Beta male. The Alfa male will fight for tha cave and protect this from other malefish.

Good luck to your project with L-134.

I have tried to breed this catfish with no success. They are not a easy catfish to breed.

Mats H. O. Hansen wrote:Well, my budget can afford 4 of them, but i'd like to know if its ok with 2+2 (2 males,2 females) or if its better with 1+2 (1 male, 2 females). Is it some other openions about how many i can have in a 85 liter aquarium? As written before, i am going to try make a breeding group.

At about 4cm the chances of sexing them is about the same as using body shape on six year old children to tell if they are boys or girls - if they have the same type of clothes and hair-cut, it's unlikely you will be able to tell the difference. You'll just have to take your chances. As stated before, buying some smaller ones and some larger ones would help your chances of getting both males and females - that's assuming of course they are all the same age. If they are fish from different groups that are say a few months difference in age, then there's no good way of telling at such an early age.

They need to be at least about 7cm long to be able to tell if they are male or female (and even then, it's hard to say for sure).

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Mats

I recently set up my 1st F1 L134 breeding groups and they are 2-3/4 inches Total Length and about 22 months old.
Using the body profile shape to sex them per Mat's suggestion. They seemed fairly easy to sex to me that way but it remains to be seen if they spawn at only 2 years old. I know others say that L134 can spawn at these ages. My wild breeders were just as large when I received them but it was another 2 years before they began spawning.

It is difficult to say how hard they are to spawn because if they spawn like mine it will be frequent for about 6 months on and 6 months off without effort. At least that is how it has been for me for two spawning seasons. They seem easy enough to breed but if they were then it seems like more people would be breeding them than there are. I really don't know why mine seemed pretty straight forward. I have always had the strange luck of doing well with some challenging species while failing with some that are considered easy.
The brood sizes have ranged around 25 to 35 fry.
I like using 20 longs for 2 males and 4 females. During spawning season sometimes as many as 80+ fry remain in the breeding tank before I remove them to make room for the next broods.
It is almost time for mine to resume spawning. So far they have always begun spawning about March 1st then wrap things up at about September 1st. Only a couple fry have ever appeared during the winter.

For those without immediate access to conversions:
2 3/4" = 2.75" = 7cm (within a hundredth of a cm). 4cm = 1.5" = 1 1/2" (1.57" or 1 9/16" if you want to get a bit closer in inches...)

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Mats

Hi! I understand that it is not possible to sex them when they are only 3-4 cm. I was thinking that i can buy 4 of them, to have a bigger chanse to get at least one male. I would like to have an alfa male and a beta male, so it could be some action in the aquarium. But, is it possible to have alpha male and beta male + 2 females in a 85 liter tank? Or is that gonna be to much? Is it enough with one female per male? I think that they would act more naturally with alpha+beta male and 2 females, but i don't know if its gonna work with 2+2( thoughts )

85 liters doesn't really tell us how much fish you can have in a tank, as to a large extent (at least for plecos), the base area rather than the volume of water is what decides what you can keep.

Technically, we could have a tank that is 85 cm2 in base (or about 9 x 9cm) and ten meters tall [yes, that would be extremely unusual shape].

But if we assume a "regular" shape tank, so about 35 cm on the short side, 40 cm tall and about 75-80 cm long [I'm just making those numbers up from "backwards calculation"], then I'd say it's fine.

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Mats

Thaks MatsP!

The last thing about length e.t.c is correct. At least something like that Then i think that i will go for 4, but is it anyone who knows if it is ok with 2 males(alpha+beta) and 2 females(one to each male):?: ( I know that i can't sex them, but i am hoping for the best )

One male will certainly be the dominant one if there are more than one male in a tank - unless the tank is absolutely massive - say a 1000 liter tank or more [I'm actually not quite sure how large it needs to be, but certainly more than a few hundred liters to allow two males to have their own territory in one tank]. This applies to almost all loricariidae - obviously the size of the territory will vary with the size of the fish.

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Mats

So 4 sounds ok? I also have 2 big roots. One og them has sort of a little cave in it, but not something "real" The other has a big crack , and i think it is just big enough for a L-134 to squeese in

Sounds good.

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Mats

MatsP wrote:One male will certainly be the dominant one if there are more than one male in a tank - unless the tank is absolutely massive - say a 1000 liter tank or more [I'm actually not quite sure how large it needs to be, but certainly more than a few hundred liters to allow two males to have their own territory in one tank]. This applies to almost all loricariidae - obviously the size of the territory will vary with the size of the fish.

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Mats

Really? Say, in a 500 l tank, with lots of aquascaping/caves, there will still be a dominant male? Would they be able to find each other even? The reason that I am asking is that it seems not consistent with the size of the fish. 1000 l would surely be 6 or 8' long and have plenty of places for the males to dominate.

I had 2 in a 400 liter tank (5ft long, 20" wide, 24" tall) with a fair number of caves and hiding spaces, and one was definitely the dominant one [of course, I was hoping that one was a female, but I'm pretty convinced they both were male].

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Mats

Wow...that's really useful information. So then the non-dominant male gets no females?


[edit: meant useful, not usual...that sentence made no sense. ]

2wheelsx2 wrote:Wow...that's really usual information. So then the non-dominant male gets no females?

That probably depends on the number of females present that are in breeding condition. After all, they are fish, not wolves.

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Mats

The caves are in the aquarium, so now i am waiting for the shop to get the fish on their list

I have 19 in a 36 x 18 tank. They range from almost 2" to 3". I have had them for about 2 months. Lots of caves and hiding places but I know it will be at least a year before they are close to being big enough. I am spawning L129 and L199 so I hope to have luck with these also.

bristlenosedude wrote:I have 19 in a 36 x 18 tank. They range from almost 2" to 3". I have had them for about 2 months. Lots of caves and hiding places but I know it will be at least a year before they are close to being big enough. I am spawning L129 and L199 so I hope to have luck with these also.

That's a tank with a fair bit more bottom area than Mats Hansen's tank - like 50% more. And I'd say 19 is quite overstocked in that size of tank.

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Mats

I agree with MatsP. It sounds like a little overcrowded aquarium.

They are just growing out now, haven't had them long. I will split them and setup 2 groups. I tend to over crowd most of my fish, and old African cichlid habit. I keep my BN's at 2 males and about 8 females in the same size tank. Juvie BN's at 250+ in a 55 growout and raise them in large numbers successfully. Lots of water changes and good food.