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Reproduction FAQs on Loricariids, South and Central American Suckermouth
Cats
Related Articles: Loricariids, Otocinclus, From
Pan-ack-ay to Pan-ack-zee, A Detailed Look at the Bizarre But Beautiful
Panaque Catfishes by Neale Monks
Related Catfish FAQs: Loricariids 1,
Loricariids 2,
Otocinclus, Loricariid
Identification, Loricariid Behavior,
Loricariid Compatibility,
Loricariid Selection,
Loricariid Systems,
Loricariid Feeding,
Loricariid Disease, Catfish: Identification,
Behavior, Compatibility,
Selection, Systems,
Feeding, Disease,
Reproduction, Algae
Eaters,
Large "Pleco" species are best bred, raised in (heated)
ponds. |
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What do I do with extra Otocinclus?
5/30/07
I have a 5 gal. Eclipse Corner Tank on my desk at work. There were 2 Betta's
(with a divider) in it, but when I added 3 Oto's from PetSmart soon after the
Betta's died of tail/fin rot. I moved them to separate bowls, and treated them
but they died. I figured it was the addition of the Oto's so I expected them to
die as well. That didn't happen. They cleaned my tank of all algae, and I feared
they would have nothing to eat because it seems they won't eat the algae flakes.
So, I went to my buddy's Cichlid tank and traded all the ornaments (no, I don't
know if this was a smart thing to do or not, but I did it anyway). It seemed,
that this brought new life to the Oto's, as very soon after I spotted little
white things on the front of the tank. When I realized it was fry, I shut off
the filter. I counted about 12 fry stuck the glass. I turned to the internet for
advice and found little. I put a baby sock rubber banded over the filter intake
and turned that back on. Added an air pump for them. I fed them boiled spinach
leaves. Well, a spinach leaf from a coworkers salad stuffed in a cup of hot
water. They ate little holes in that overnight. I do a 50% water change weekly,
and slowly suck out the leftover food every few days to keep the substrate
somewhat clean. Now I keep exchanging plants with my buddy's Cichlid tank for
food and they clean it overnight. There are now 4 or 5 baby's left and they are
half the size of the adults and seem to be doing fine. My question is, what can
I do with these extra Oto's? Can they go in the Cichlid tank? Isn't that too
much hardness for a Cichlid? Or can I support 7 to 8 Oto's in a 5 gal tank?
PetSmart told me that they stock the same sex in the same tank and sell them
that way so this wouldn't happen. Well they screwed up and now I have these new
guy's. What do people do with their new fish when they didn't mean or even know
they would spawn?
<Wow. This is quite an amazing tale! On the one hand, a 5 gallon tank is really
too small for Otocinclus. As a group, Otocinclus are considered "delicate"
because they need good water quality and lots of oxygen. In most community
tanks, they tend to be short lived. But yours are doing well, so well done!
Anyway, as to where to put the Otocinclus. I personally wouldn't mix them with
anything other than, perhaps, South American or West African dwarf cichlids. The
problems are multiple. Firstly, yes, they will not do well in Lake Malawi/Lake
Tanganyika type aquaria. Such hard and alkaline water conditions will not suit
them at all. Secondly, when kept with slow moving things like angelfish and
discus they tend to suck the sides of the bigger fish, scraping off the mucous.
I've seen this in my own tanks, with the Otocinclus rasping away on large
gobies, creating nasty blisters. Aggressive fish like convict cichlids will
simply hammer them to death. So ideally, give them to someone with a peaceful
community of other small fish such as barbs and tetras. PetSmart cannot possibly
sex Otocinclus so their advice there was nonsense. In fact, breeding Otocinclus
is quite uncommon, so you've actually done rather well.>
Tom
<Cheers, Neale>
Spawning Rio de para Pleco 11/19/06
Hi. I've heard that the Rio de para Pleco (L75) has not been spawned in
captivity yet. Is this true?
Thanks,
Kelly
<Mmm, am not that "up" on such matters with Loricariids... Would seek out your
answer through "Planet Catfish", other FW BB's that have a good number of
Siluriiform membership. Bob Fenner>
Breeding Otocinclus ... Neat!
6/22/06
Greetings, and thank you for your site, it has a wealth of information. I
was particularly excited to see a letter from
Andrea Hall entitled "Tiny White Bugs in a FW Set Up - 03/25/2006" in the "FAQs
on Otocinclus". I don't have a question for you, but rather I'd like to make a comment about
that letter and relate an experience of
my own. Andrea expressed concern over some little white specks she had
discovered in her tank when examining her
Otocinclus which "was more than just plump, it was huge" and had submitted
photo's of her Oto and the specks. One reply from Chuck suggested they were probably a form of daphnia, RMF
suggested that they indeed were likely to have been fry. I had an experience with my two Otocinclus this past weekend which would
confirm that they are indeed fry. This past Saturday my wife mentioned to me that she had noticed the previous evening
that the Oto's appeared to be spawning,
I took a look and found that it seemed they were, the female's belly was
extremely distended - probably two to three times
its normal size. The male who normally paid little to no attention to her was
frantically following her around the aquarium. As
she seemed to stop and clean a spot of glass or a plant leaf he would cling to
her or next to her, sometimes wrapping his
body around the top of her head so the two of them formed a "T" shape, and
sometimes clinging to her back or side. Searching the internet I found precious little in regards to
Otocinclus
spawning, but I did find that the behaviour was supposed to be a fairly common
mating routine among their relatives. So I assumed that they were breeding. The
behaviour continued for many hours. The following day the females belly was back to her normal size and the two
were back to their normal routine - eating, resting,
and pretty much ignoring each other. I tried to find eggs in the tank but was
unable to see anything. While looking for eggs
though, I found the same little white specks throughout the tank as Andrea
described, they were everywhere, numbering easily in to the hundreds. And, as Andrea described, they moved much the same as the
full-grown Oto's. I too, thought they may be some kind of invader in my tank, but found the
coincidence of their arrival and my Oto's deciding to spawn just a bit too
convenient. So assumed they were fry. Then today I ran across Andrea's photo's
on your FAQ page.
My fry look exactly like her white specs. I'm just as shocked as I am excited, this is a small five gallon tank that I
keep slightly brackish for the sake of the green spotted puffer who was it's
sole occupant until putting the two Otocinclus in to eat the algae about three
or four months ago. I felt bad about putting them in that tank, feeling the salt
content may be to high for them, but they have thrived and by this recent
sequence of events I'd judge them to be quite content in their home.
Incidentally, the salt content is about 1 teaspoon per gallon, half of which is
aquarium salt and half marine salt.
I am sending you links to video I took of the spawning and of the fry. They are
quite large videos not too suited for dial up connections, and even on high
speed will take about a minute to load. If you'd like links to video more suited
to dial up let me know and I will make them available.
Link to breeding video :
http://www.farrant.info/video/Otocinclus_breeding.wmv
Link to video of fry :
http://www.farrant.info/video/Baby_Otocinclus.wmv
I'd be very interested in any comments anyone may have, and very grateful to
any tips anyone may have to help me raise
the fry successfully. I have rounded up any plants and algae laden materials I
could find from my other tanks to help supply them
with food as well as making a broccoli paste for them. The puffer is getting
moved to a different tank, I have turned off the filter
so their pinpoint bodies don't get sucked in - to help compensate I have
increased the airflow in the tanks bubbler and am doing daily trickle water
changes with aged water.
Thank you, Bill Farrant
< One of the great things about the internet and this website is the information
that gets passed around. Oto's are very cheap algae eaters than many breeders
have no interest in breeding because there is no money in breeding them. That is
why you have had trouble finding any info. In the previous letter you referred
to, I was unable to bring up the photo and wrongly assumed they were daphnia.
Bob was able to get the photo up and posted on the website. I looked back and
saw the photo and knew that they were fry. This information is very useful
because there are many other Oto species that are very attractive but very
expensive too. Breeders may be willing to obtain these new species if they knew
how to breed them. Thank you very much for sharing this info.-Chuck>
Angels and Clowns
I have a 90 gallon show tank. It is decorated with wood, a single large piece of holey limestone, black gravel and floating plastic bamboo plants...sort of a sparse
Zen look. It has clown loaches (2"-4")... they eat out of my hand...and
Bushynose Plecos... the Plecos are actually breeding on a routine basis.
The pH is 7.2, temperature is 80 degrees, and ammonia and nitrite are zero. It has been up and running for 18 months. I use two Emperor 400s. I change 10% of the water daily and wash out the filer pads in the process.
I want to add a few angelfish. Are they compatible with the clown loaches? The loaches are pretty active sometimes. Also, would the angelfish help control the
Pleco population? My LFS gives me $2 each for them...several hundred dollars so far... but it is a hassle to take everything out of the tank to catch them and it disturbs the fish.
>> You should be able to add some angels, but please start with medium sized fish, the activity of the clown loaches at night may bother the small angels. They will, unfortunately, eat some of your baby
Bristlenose Plecos. If you want to catch your Bristlenose babies without having to take the tank apart try putting some food (romaine lettuce, tied to an airstone) at night, with a net underneath it. The baby
Plecos will enter the net from the top and swim down to eat the lettuce in the stream of bubbles. Use a flashlight to see when
Plecos are in your net and lift! Good Luck, Oliver
<<
Frog Spawn
Hello again, Thank you Don for your help a little while ago, you majorly
calmed me down, and everything is AWESOME.
I had acquired fish from a friend and a tank on Christmas. refer to "Suddenly
Stocked Tank", WWM FAQs.) Well everything is going great, have done 6 water
changes since I got the fish. All my levels are looking great (I think those
established bio-wheels really helped). I got some ghost shrimp today, just to
clean a little.
Well my question is, I have noticed clear sacks with yellow dots in them in the
bottom of one of my plants, kind of weaved through it. Quite a lot of it
probably 50-80 little yellow dots(1mm) all in a single sack. And than there's
like yellow brownish flecks and pieces of what look like clear egg sack all over
my plant leaves. My plants are fake.
Well I don't know who laid them, could it have been my Plecos? My Plecos are
almost a year old and 1 is 9" and the other 6", one is obviously smaller, are
they male and female? Or one is it that the one is more aggressive and
gets all the food (which routinely happens, I put algae wafers in his\her little
spot so he\she can eat)?
How do you tell the difference? Is that what their egg looks like and where they
lay them? I also have a 4" Gourami, 1" orange tetra, 1" clown loach, a frog (who
seems to be in the eggs a lot), 6" black ghost knife (he's my buddy now, I got
him frozen bloodworms and feed them to him on the end of a skewer). I don't
think anything else could have laid them. I plan on getting 2 fire green tetras
in a week, I finally found a place that will BUY my Plecos. I'm quite happy,
after I have been trying to give them away. What should I do with the eggs? I'm
not really too concerned about propagating, but something small in my tank might
serve as a nice snack for my black ghost knife. Or the frog. Or anything. What
do you think? Again thank you for all your help in my beginning worries. And the
rest of the WWM staff for the amazing website you guys keep up.
James
<First thought was snail eggs. Very common. They are laid in a jelly like mass.
But on re-reading the part about "weaving though" the plant leaves I now think
they may be frog eggs. I never kept frogs, but do recall that some species lay
long strings of eggs in a protective jelly. Snail eggs would be in a single
round clump. Either way I would remove them. If they're frog eggs they will be
infertile without a male and will decay. If they're snail eggs you're looking at
a population explosion. Your Gourami and tetra would both lay single eggs, not
in a mass. I don't think Clown Loaches have ever been breed in captivity and
would need to be much larger. (BTW, will grow slow, but can hit 8" to a foot. Be
aware) Plecos are cave breeders. They would spawn in a protected area that the
male would be defending. So that leaves the frog and snails. To sex your plecs
look at the trailing edges of the fins and gill covers. Mature males will have
frilly tassels decorating these areas. Also, when viewed from above the male
will appear thinner and more tapered than the female. The larger fish may be
getting mature enough to sex. At 6" the smaller is still to young. And another
BTW, they may eat the ghost shrimp. Don>
Loricariid fry
Hi Bob, or whoever is in, <Don jumping at this one!>
My Ancistrus catfish are breeding all the time. Usually the male is looking
after the fry for 1 to 3 weeks until they are all gone. Mostly probably eaten by
the other inhabitants of the community tank (different rainbows and bitterling).
Every here and than I will find a young one weeks later. About 5 months ago I
disturbed him just shortly after the eggs hatched and I took them out to raise
them in a little tank on my kitchen bench. By now they are developed into 2
different sizes: ~3cm and ~3.5cm. From the size difference and the behaviour I
think the bigger ones are the males although I can't see the bristles jet. Am I
right? I noticed that the female is already pregnant again even though the male
just let go of the others. It is amazing, they are like a breeding machine and
each time it seems there are more eggs. What would be the best time to remove
the eggs/ fry to raise them in a different tank? I would like to give some of
the off-spring to a friend.
<Wow, great timing on this one! My albino Bristlenose just spawned for the first
time a few days ago. Still waiting for my first hatch. Mine are alone in a 10
gallon so no need to move. But in your case I would move them a day before they
hatch. Let the father do his thing fanning them as long as possible. A day or
two after they hatch would work, but do it before they leave the cave. Easier to
move the eggs, IMO. Not sure if the size difference has to do with sex. Mine
were pretty much all the same until they were twice as large as yours. Some may
be feeding a little more aggressively than the others. The bristles will not
appear until they are 6 to 8 months old. Hard to sex until then, but females may
appear thicker when viewed from above>
As with the other inhabitants in the tank they are breeding as well. Well, they
try. I notice the courting and sometimes I find all the fishies very busy in one
small area and having, what looks like, a nice meal in between. I don't take
them out to breed them, so I just enjoy watching their courtship.
Thanks for your help
Silvia
<That your fish are breeding this often is a sign of your fine care. It is no
problem at all that the fish are eating the eggs. Very natural and healthy food.
But I'd find it hard not to set up a breeder for the Rainbows. Don>
Ancistrus temminckii breeding
Dear Robert,
I would like to ask you some questions about Ancistrus temminckii and
breeding.
How long do they need to be (inches/cm) before they can start
breeding?
<Coincidentally have a friend in PA (Don) who breeds these regularly,
including albino ones...>
Books say "a hollow in a piece of bogwood will be chosen as the
spawning site." - I can't find a piece of wood that big, can I use a
clay flower pot (upside-down) with a hole in it big enough for them to
enter?
<Yes, this is what Don uses mostly...>
I guess the main question is: Do they need a 'cave' OR a 'hole' ;where
a cave has one entrance and a hole has two?
<One is fine, two is okay>
If you could reply at your earliest convenience it would be
appreciated.
Keith
<Glad to help... take a read through the "South American Suckermouth
Catfishes" section on the www.WetWebMedia.com site yet? Bob Fenner>
Re: Ancistrus temminckii breeding
Dear Robert,
I have looked at WetWebMedia. What object should I use for the
spawning site? -can't find large bogwood with hollow in it.
<Either a small diameter piece of PVC pipe or a clay type flower pot with a
section broken on the lip for access placed upside down. Bob Fenner>
Thanks
Keith
Re: Ancistrus temminckii breeding
Sorry to bother you again but what if the pot is made of clay?
Should I leave only one entrance?
<Yes, this is fine. As long as there is enough room for the animals to turn
around to make it in/out. Bob Fenner>
Thanks a lot for your help
Keith
Please HELP! Breeding, losing Plecos
Dear Robert,
my name is Dusan and I'm form Slovakia. I have just started breeding my Plecos
and they spawned after a short time. I was quite happy to see the eggs in a
tube.
<Yes, very exciting>
I replaced the whole tube with the male into a smaller tank filled with the same
water of the big one. My first Plecos hatched and hung at the side of my tank
and after 8 days I fed them first time. They grew up after 2 months to about 2
cm. Then they spawned again. I replaced the male and they hatched OK. So it went
about 4 times. After hatching I waited 7 days after they absorb the yolk sack. I
feed them cattle heart and spinach and they're (were) all crazy about it. But...
My second fry suddenly started to die out! After they were all gone, my first
fry also died! Now I have stopped feeding them the heart and replaced it with
fish fillet. The third fry was OK for a short time, but now they started to die
too! I'm so sad to watch them struggle for life.
And the way of dying is crazy. They swim around OK then they cannot stick to a
wall (they slide down), after they seem to eat a bit and then I find them dead
(w/ belly upward).
Water conditions: dGH 4-10 ´N, 24-25 ´C (78 ´F), pH 7, no plants, no roots,
aeration & filtration YES
<Some friends who breed, raise Plecos (family Loricariidae) for sale use
pelleted foods (mostly the formulated foods by Purina marketed as "Trout
Chow") almost exclusively for very young (hatchlings) to a few months
old... grading into par-boiled zucchini and other softened terrestrial
greens.>
I guess you may know the answer. I would be very thankful if you would respond
as soon as you can. Thank you very much.
Faithfully
Dusan Karac
<Am sending your note out to friends on the Net for their assistance as well.
Be chatting. Bob Fenner>
Breeding Ancistrus sp.
hey Bob, Don from PA.
breeding Ancistrus sp. housing, abs tube black 6 to 8in long
1and 1/2 round block one end you have to will to anchor it down it
dose not sink. feed ( zucchini raw )put a lead weight on it
green beans ( French style)', shrimp pellets,.
drift wood they chew on it. lots of water changes temp.74/76 I do not remove fry
good parents.
I hope this helps
your friend
Don from pa.
<Thanks for this Don. Your vast experience does indeed "count".
Thank you for sharing. Bob Fenner>
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