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at last...: ) i have 10 petricola fry that are around an inch long now. i've just come back from being gone for nearly two weeks and notice that the coloration of a few of them is developed to the point where they look exactly like their parents. others, while having the leading white fin edge of petricolas have totally black posteriors...this black area (maybe 1/5 or 1/4 of body length) is separated from the normal coloration that exists on the anterior part of their bodies by a narrow white band. all of these are about the same size although they did come from three different spawnings. one of the largest also has a nearly white body background color...not totally white but nearly...in fact when "she?" swam by and i saw her for the first time since coming back late yesterday, i noticed her and thought...wow! that's a totally different color. she does have the normal pattern development otherwise.

does anyone see such discrepancies in their fry? or is the blackness and white band still just the immaturity of some of them? they all did start clear bodied and then had black blotches with increasing pattern development. also, i am wondering about this one with the light background color....is one of the largest and so i assume one of the first batch of three....does sexual coloration show this early?

thanks for any insights anyone has had with their fry. btw, these are the small s. petricolas.

If you look hard at the pics of the fry in the Cat-eLog, you will see that this is the normal condition.

hmmm. i checked both the s. petricola Cat-eLog descriptions and photos and the COTM listing and neither seems to show the images that you refer to. can you provide a link?

i was pretty certain that the banding and black areas were juvenile markings but still am interested in the background color and sex question. do you have any idea about how soon these catfish develop sexual distinguishing features?...particularly the body color since that is the variable that i see.

thanks for responding.

barbara

You should be looking at this. Look at the photo captioned "Tank raised juveniles".

thanks....how in the world did you find those images? i went to the listing and got only nine images. i think i may have seen this page at another time. sadly that image doesn't show up well on this computer...is way small....even when enlarged. i'll try on my other computer later....that monitor is bigger. i'll just assume that what is in the image is what i am seeing myself. i do notice that on some of them, the black area is breaking into the normal patterning.

i'll ask another person i know who is raising them as to this odd light background one.

thanks for your help.

barbara

Barbara, My Petricolas took 18 months to mature. Everyone will have different results,depending on how and what they feed. But upon maturity there is a obvius difference in body shape. One being long and thinner(the male0 and the other MUCH fatter. Hope I was of some help.

thanks Wood. Can you say more about their appearance, size and so on (size particularly) at 18 months? These are maybe two and a half months and around 1" long.

i'm always amazed at what hardy fish these petricolas are. not to mention interesting.

Barbara Sorry I took so long to get back. My 2 adults are now full grown I believe at 3 1/2 to 4 inces. The males spots are closer together and has more, but I believe that will vary. If you have a light colored one perhaps it is leaning toward albinoism. Good luck.

Wood...again thanks for the response....time is not an issue. not to worry! : )

Albinoism...i was kind of wondering about that, too! Being as these are my first fry, I have so many questions but am learning as I go. They are developing much faster than I thought they would...they are quite eager eaters....much more so than their parents but now that spawning is routine, the adults also seem to eat more. The other day I had tried to take a ramshorn snail (a fairly good sized one) off a tank wall (in another tank) to crush to give to them as they LOVE snails.....the shell popped off (horrors!) and the hugest snail was fully exposed....i could not believe how big it was....took a net and captured it and dropped it into the petricola parent tank...walked back downstairs putting the net away and by the time I walked back upstairs, the snail was gone! perhaps not fully eaten (although maybe it was) but at least they had grabbed it and taken it to their lair. They are some of the most curious of my fish...even more so than the loaches who are somewhat known for their curiosity.

Suddenly, the long waited spawings of the petricolas and my n. pulchers (different tanks) are happening all at once. It is quite delightful and a vast improvement over the hoards of livebearers that I've raised. Again, thanks for your response.

Barbara, How are you harvesting your eggs? Let me know how you are raising the fry.

I have been using the filter in marbles in flower pot cave and capturing the eggs in a breeder net where many fungus and a few develop into what i am calling "free swimmers"...then i've sucked them up one at a time with a small baster and deposited them into a 2.5G tank with a sponge filter and onyx gravel.....all that i've transferred have lived!!

the main problems that i've had are with eggs fungusing and capturing the free swimmers....i flipped the breeder net so that the seams are on the outside....the selvages that is....and that helped a little but they like to hide under the plastic frame which makes them hard to capture. i also tried suctioning up the eggs and putting them into another tank (didn't work...probably the fry ate them?) and also tried to put them in a hard plastic tube(from a siphon) that had an air line running into it to act as a tumbler...rick from Canada who may have posted here told me about his success with this but i was unable to control the air flow well enough and blew the eggs to smitherins. : (

today i put a clear glass bowl with marbles below the cave and dispensed with the filter/net situation....i don't know if this is going to work or not but two people...both of them are named rick if i recall correctly...fishnut and the fellow from Canada have used similar techniques w/o the uptake and net situation and seem to get quite a lot of fry....so i'm going to give that a try although i do think some sort of aeration would help with preventing fungus.

i hope i explained what you are wanting to know...i think in the future i will not use substrate in the 2.5G tank...i did this the first time around so that i would be certain to have lots of cycled material in the tank....but i did transfer all 10 fry, their sponge filter and another sponge filter from another tank and all the gravel to a 10G tank where they are now....i also have had some java moss in the tanks always and a tiny hygro plant in the 2.5 and a couple larger ones now in the 10...they like to eat at the java moss...i think they get micro nutrients from it and also they like to hide under it and under the foot of the sponge filters that i am using. also, recently i added a 1" pvc tube that's maybe 3" long...one likes to rest in it...propped half way on the side and bottom of it.

Thanks for all the info! One more thing are the eggs clear,white or black? Thanks again in advance.

the eggs are somewhere between clear and white i'd say. i've read of other eggs being thought to be unfertilized when white but don't know if this holds true for petricolas. have not seen black eggs at all.

i have quartz sand in this tank and think that i may have missed the first eggs (if there was a small amount) as they look ever so much like the grains of sand....the only distinction being that they are perfectly round whereas the sand has angles...but the size is similar....very very small.

have you raised yours or did you get them small? btw, nice to see that someone in the same part of the country is interested in raising these sweet fish....the person who was the breeder of them in Maine, stopped breeding them so, afaik, i'm the only person up here doing it....the last time i was in the store where i got them (awhile ago actually as the store is out of the way and nearly two hours from here) they said they'd buy any i got but they also told me that they could only be raised by cuckoo....just one of many misinformations they have given me....but since they said my method was bogus (the flowerpot) and i knew that it wasn't from others' experience, i persisted. i doubt they've ever been to this site or even heard of it....a pity as they carry a huge line of AF cichlids and catfish. ah well. : )

hth,
barbara

My Petricolas have been spawing for a while now. I use a margerine tab with marbles and a small flower pot on top with holes drilled. Every three or four days I remove the tub and replace it with a fresh clean tub. The marbles are removed carefully, one by one and a drop of M. Blue added with a airstone for circulation. In about 36 hours the eggs hatch. The fry look like the egg with a tail swimming around. I feed the fry micro worms for a few days and then BBS.
The problem I am encountering is sibling canabalism. Some of the fry grow faster than the others and it would appear the larger ones are feeding on the smaller ones. I have not witnessed this but sooner or later I end up with a few larger fry and all of the smaller ones go missing.
I can only assume that the larger ones are feeding on the smaller ones. I keep the fry in a bare tank with sponge filters. Has anyone else come across this problem?

could you say a bit more about where and how you keep the eggs once the container of them is removed and the m. blue added? do you leave them on the marbles or remove them as i have been doing? put them in another tank...??? i'm still having issues with the eggs clumping and fungusing...still i get several that live on. this last hatch and the first one where i removed the marbles and eggs in the container has produced, it appears, another 10 little ones that are now scurrying all over their 2.5 tank. i am using a sponge filter with them but also a very thin layer of sand for the biological media it adds (i had a small ammonia issue with the last batch and think it killed several fry. : ((( (I had just set the tank up and hadn't decided which filter to borrow from another tank and thought there wouldn't be a problem until the fry hatched...wrong. btw, mine seem to start hatching within 24 hrs and then can go on from there.

in this last batch i thought there were only two survivors but now a couple of weeks later suddenly, there are 10 again!

i do add a big clump of java moss into their environment and they hide in that and that MAY keep the smaller ones safe from the larger ones but not if there is too much difference in size. i say that because i did add some eggs to the tank where the first group of 10 now reside...similar environment to the 2.5 but with a pvc tube (app. 1x3), two filters and 10G....and those disappeared. in the first batch, i got 10 but first there were three or four and later i found two or three at a time and added them and they swam right into the java moss...they were smaller than the first group but they all survived and all are now over 1" or nearly 1" for the smaller ones. also their pattern has been filling in.

a fellow i email with who's also raising them (much more successfully than i) has mentioned the cannibalism. i'll send him this link and maybe he will have more to say about that.

Got the link Barbara, and yes I have had troubles in the past with 2 - 4 week old fry eating new hatched ones, but typically if they are all from the same hatch I have not witnessed any of the larger ones eating the small ones. As a matter of fact my recent hatch of about 100 or so fry, I am removing small dead ones, couple a day, that are not being eaten obviously, and are definately smaller than many of their tank mates. But as I said, I learned quickly not to put new born fry in with anything older than a week, lost 200+ fry in one night to a dozen month old ones.

I leave the eggs in the margerine tub with an air stone till they hatch. The container is floated in the 2.5 g tank with the larger fry. When the fry are about a week old they are transferred to the 2.5g tank. I had collected some eggs yesterday and today I have a hatch of about 15 fry. So you are right about the hatching time being 24 hrs.
Presently I have about 10 fry of varying ages. The largest one is about 1.5 inch and they are in a 15g tank with some Mbuna fry. The adults spawn about once every two weeks, specially after a good feeding of live white worms and CBW. I do feed the fry twice a day with BBS and microworms. So they should not be hungry enough to devour each other. Any advice as to how to avoid sibling canibalism is appreciared.

thanks for the details on how you take care of the eggs....i guess i'll give that a try as what i am doing with a net, while it worked in the 2.5G, there was still a lot of fungused eggs and now that i'm trying it in the parents' tank it doesn't work as well as i have to hold the handle of the net each time i open the tank cover to feed....on the 2.5 it rested on the top but i didn't want to put the net in there with the older fry who have become quite active....before when i did it, i had just started the tank back up.

i've been considering using the m. blue but didn't want to do it in any of the tanks per se so your suggestion makes that possible.

do you use a baster to get the fry out or some other means? i was trying to get some of the early hatched ones out of the net but had little success...none actually and now there don't SEEM to be any moving in there but i know that can be deceptive.

Thanks for the link Barbra. Some very usefull info.
I just add one drop of M. Blue to my hatching tub. Seems to minimize the fungussing of eggs. I tried two and three drops and managed to kill all of thr eggs. I still have lots fo fungussed eggs (about 60%). I attribute this to not being fertile.
I am going to keep my present bath of fry seperate and hopefully minimize fry loss due to canibalism.

again thanks for additional details. this last batch may be a wash for me...nothing seems to be moving but i'll give them a day or so more. it seems that some hatch WAY late...is that possible? anyway, wish i was closer to you guys we could thrash out ways of raising these delightful fish. meanwhile i'm looking at my two eupterus and wondering about them...one always seems flat bellied and the other very rotund...well, slightly rotund...and the way they carry on, i do wonder if i have been so fortunate as to have a male and female. guess i need to start reading about THEM!! they are close to having their own 70G tank....only two other fish with them now and both of those could find other digs here.

good luck you guys and let me know if you come up with any good methods of getting better results...rick seems to have the best system yet and i've not been able to reproduce it although i could give it another try when i get a few spare moments...not often!!. : )

My LFS has some small tank bred Eupterus. I did not know that these can be tank bred. I will buy some and try my luck.
I have placed an order for Granulosis. I wonder if these can be bred?

i don't actually know that they CAN be bred but i think i recall seeing images of them somewhere here. of course i have a terrible memory...and can't even find the right images when i'm told they are here so don't rely on me for accuracy! (sorry to say!!)

still, despite all those disclaimers, i do think it is possible but i still haven't had time to study the eupterus information on the cat-e-log (however they spell that) and am going by said failing memory. btw, those guys/gals get huge....which is why i've been wanting to clear out all the other fish in the 70gallon so they have it to their own delight. sadly, despite there being lots of hiding spots for them, they want to share the same real estate. it works out mostly but every now and then they really take off on each other. if i were brave enough i'd capture each and check the vent as i believe that is how they can be sexed....but they are big and not easy to capture...i used a baking bowl to get the first eupterus when i transferred it from quarantine to this tank.

Some Syno's are bred by using hormone injections; eupterus, angelicus, nigrita, decorus etc?

luckily these are not hybridised; they're just bred in numbers for the trade, like for example the Clown Loach (Botia macracantus) and the Red Tailed Shark (Epalzeorhynchus bicolor).

that because true breeding them is next to impossible, or perhaps eben never done?

Hence the availability of tiny similar sized batches of Syno's with usually reach 6-10".

so even if my two are a pair, i should not expect them to produce fry?

i thought i'd seen images of someone here who had done so, but as i say, i've been too busy to take the time to check and read...quick posts and back to work or tank maintenance, or, lately, cat care....the four legged kind.

thanks for your comments.

I now have ~150 swimmers, ~8-9 days old.

Lost my first batch, tried again with more success.

I used cleaner water with plenty of flow this time. My set up is below. For collecting the eggs, I use a clear bowl, with egg crate cut to fit about an inch above the bottom. On top of the egg crate, I lay the mesh from a hobby store, the stuff used for needlework. This allows the eggs to fall through, but keep the marble from passing through the egg crate. The eggs are free to roll around on the bottom of the container, and when I take them out I don't have to remove marbles one by one. Hope this helps.....I didn't use any antifungal medication....

eggcrate! what an excellent idea. and 150 fry...i'm envious. : ) well, sort of. is a lot of work.

i'll have to check out that mesh....the eggs go through it easily?

when do you remove the bowls and eggs? and then what do you do with the eggs? that is, how do you care for them? i have had many transfer out of the bowl alive and also many "hatch" but haven't had success in keeping large numbers alive.

i do have as many as i can handle easily right now but more are always possible and, of course, i would like to get more out of each batch.

thanks for sharing your information and am curious to hear of what you do "next" with them once they are out of the bowl bottom.

I have the same problem as Barbara. I get about 20 eggs weekly and can raise only a few fry to a good size. I am trying various methods. I will post when it works. The egg crtae is a very good idea.