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Well, I got some new plecos this week - L-333s and L-199s. There is a sufficient amount of information that all seems congruent on the L-333s - water parameters, food, breeding, ect... but I can't seem to find out much about the L-199s. Here are some of my questions -

What would be an ideal diet to encourage fast growth?
What age/size do they need to be for breeding?

I have been successful breeding Ancistrus. Are there any significant differences in breeding behavior or stress signals that I should be aware of?

Thanks for your help! I have 4 L-333s that are in my Apisto/Ram tank right now, and I don't really see them much. I have 4 wild L-199s and 6 F1 L-199s. The F1s are very small, the others are about 2 1/2 - 3 inches.

Ideal diet would be a mix of meaty prepared food (sinking pellets/tablets suitable for "carnivore" fish, such as Tetra Prima, Tetra Tabimin, JBL Novo Tabs, etc), live/frozen foods such as blood- or black-worm, as well as offering some vegetable food such as courgette/zucchini, etc. These fish are primarly carnivore, but will take (and benefit from) a bit of vegetable too.

For more "home-made" food ideas, you can have a look at the feeding pleco part 1 article that is linked on the side of this post (where it says "Articles(2)").

The size they breed at would be around 7cm/2.75" or perhaps a bit larger.

Breeding would be similar to Ancistrus as far as I'm aware - and similar to L333. Essentially, any care/information that applies to L333 or other Hypancistrus [aside from environmenta/species details such as temperature and size] should apply to too.

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Mats

I am breeding the L199.I would like to add that the males get very aggressive when breeding so make sure the lady's have a place to hide.

Thank you! You are very helpful. I have been giving the L-199s algae discs and shrimp pellets. They seem to care more about the algae disks, but the shrimp pellets break apart really easily. I'm looking into some other options, and I do have some frozen bloodworms.

Found this tread on my search for more info on the L199. I have 6 wc adults and am hoping to spawn them in the future.

My exact same question would be what they prefer to eat. Reading they are mostly carnivores I would like to add to the last reply that also my fish seem to prefer the green chips over the Shrimp pellets I'm giving them frozen foods (brine shrimp, blood worms, mysis) also and they seem to like that very much!
They are very active and I can sit and watch them feeding, they (in contrast to my other hypans) will come out into the open to feed and give natural behavior. It's also clear to me that they are a bit aggressive towards each other too, chasing after each other.

It's nice to own fish that I can actually see and enjoy there behavior