I have done it both ways. I used to be all bare bottom and over time I began using a bit of sand. This is as much because it hosts the bacteria we want and because, in some cases, it helps to keep the wastes in easy to spot places. While I have read about fry and a bacterial layer, I have never witn...

There is an old saying, "You get what you pay for." I use kens mini sinking sticks. I get about 6 different ones and mix them. However, I try not to feed it more than 15% of the time. I also make my own blend of his flakes and try not to feed them more than 20% of the time. My primary food...

I do not have many fish books. I do have a few on plecos. One is Ingo Seidel's Back to Nature Guide to L-Catfishes. It covers a lot of plecos not just the big ones. it has general things like dietary considerations, breeding, habitats etc. Then it goes into details of the specific fish by Genus. It ...

The rep[ashy site gives this link for international sources: France - https://www.reptiligne.fr/fr/ They only list the reptile food but they might be willing to order you fish food. there may be other European sites which do carry the fish stuff. You can find them listed by country here https://www....

My plecos now are all Hypancistrus. But I also keep corys and loaches. I use three different classes of foods. The first is frozen and these are mostly all meaty foods-blood worms, mysis and brine shrimp, brine git loaded w/ spirulina adn even daphnia. Fry get cyclops and rotifers. next i feed the R...

Beyond what Jools suggested- While the two fish may currently be of similar size, they do not end up that way. 333 gets larger. That being the case it grows more and this may mean it needs more food to do so. There is length and then there is bulk. 333 likely are bigger bodied than zebras when they ...

Brought to you by the same country where Covid originated. Why am I not surprised.

What nature has spent millions of years creating man can wreck in on a matter of a few decades.

I am always a few days behind schedule lately it seems. I should have done the below days ago... Here are some pics of the offspring shot the same time as the pic I did post. The fish for a bit more relaxed and are more typical of how most of them should look. TR173_4fish.jpg TR173_bigfish_1.jpg TR1...

I am not because it is too far for me to drive there and back. I do not care to fly any more as they have made it it to unpleasant an experience. I stared flying commercial when the planes had propellers.

I have a group of 11 TR l173 which I raised from about 1.75 inch (4.4cm). They have been spawning for about 3.5 years (not continuously). There are about 40 in a growout tank ranging from about 2 to 3.5 inches. Pics of the are not great because they were pretty stressed when I pulled their tank apar...

Let me start by saying what follows is strictly my opinion. I could be entirely mistaken in my conclusions or I could be on the money. Somebody wiser and more experienced than I am might post and say that I am wrong. I definitely see similarities when I look at other peoples pictures. For me one of ...

@Captainandy - I am not an Asian breeder and neither of my 173 groups came from Asia. One came from Brazil and the other from Germany. :d I keep and breed both of the above fish. Before I moused over the pics and saw the URLs, I had pegged the bottom one 100% as 173 and was fairly certain that the t...

The fish have been sold pending my ability to get them shipped. i should be able to pull this off in the next few weeks. I am happy a couple of members here were able to take advantage of the low pricing I had on these fish. I see them for sale as imports for $210 - $300 a fish from 1.5 - 2.25 inche...

Nothing beats cory or pleco fry for cuteness.
To paraphrase the Beatles - "You are the egg man Goo goo g'joob."

Apparently luck is running through my 173. I discovered one this morning in a 5 gal; bucket on the terrace. it is in the shade, unheated and at night temps here are in the mid 60sF (18.3C range). I found a live 173 today that was in that bucket for at least a day and possibly 2 nights and a day. Its...

So, a gent was coming by today to pick up 13 L173 from me. They were one lot of 7 and the 5 lot w/ the extra bonus fish sold in this site. The fish were house in one of my tanks on the terrace (no running water). Last week I moved out the 7 from an adjacent tank and cleared another tank of the 6 fis...

I tend to agree with the above. But I tend to broaden this a bit because I do not spawn my fish in pairs but in small groups. Over time who is spawning with whom is impossible to determine. However, I will move offspring out of breeding tanks to grow tanks before that are able to spawn. If do not re...

As promised, I selected a replacement fish. It is 2.25" TL which is bigger than the one lost.
I would love an L24, but I have mo place I could keep it.

Considering I had to catch a couple of hundred+ fish, size them, sort them and get them into various holding tanks losing just one is close to a miracle. On average I would say I netted each fish at least 3 times during the process. So I essentially netted something over 600 times. I am about to hea...

Bad news. I had to move a few fish to different tanks today, this included the above group. To my dismay I discovered the minimal remains of one of the fish in this group dead. I will select a suitable replacement, take a picture and add it to this thread. Unfortunately, I am not sure which of the s...

I doubt they died, somehow they must have crossed over to the other side of the tank, not the other side because they swam into the light........

You are most welcome.

I do have one tank with a few big clown loaches in the 10+ inch range.

Group of 6 True F1 L173 - Unsexed: Sizes TL: 2.00” to 2.25” Born & raised in my tanks: pH 7.0, TDS low 80s ppm, temp. 82-86 F. PRICE: $1,000.00 ( I will donate $100 from the above to Planetcatfish.) POST SALE SUPPORT : is available for the next year unless I am unable for health reasons includi...

I have been breaking down breeding and grow tanks to sort, measure, evaluate and inventory what I have to sell. As part of this I have been segregating fish in tanks and divided tanks. I have a 40 L I divided in half using Poret foam 2 inches thick. I had to stack some at the top because the main pi...

Group of 5 True F1 L173 - Unsexed: Sizes TL: 2.25” to 2.75” Born & raised in my tanks: pH 7.0, TDS low 80s ppm, temp. 82-86 F. Bonus --> You will get an additional, quality L173 1 5/8 inch (+/- 1/8 in.) TL of my choice. PRICE: $1,200 ( I will donate $120 from the above to Planetcatfish.) POST S...

I purchased a proven breeding group of zebra plecos in Apr. 2006. My belief was the fish were 4 -5 years old when I got them, possibly some were 6. I still have about 8 of them today. I have replaced those lost and add a few more, the group still spawns. I cannot say the spawns involve the oldest fi...

It is now a few months shy of six years since I started this thread. Since the group began spawning the have produced almost 200 offspring. Covid turned off my selling fish and I have a lot to offer these days. In order to get fish ready to sell i needed to inventory everything and then move fish to...

It is too bad this and other similar studies did not happen until after the Belo Monte dam was built instead of when they should have been done. Imagine the day when there are no ornamental fresh water fish left in the wild. I am old and will, hopefully, be long gone before this day comes. I am not ...

I have been breaking down grow and breeder tanks to start selling offspring. I have a load of my usually poor pictures I moved from the camera to my PC to edit, I have not had time to do much, but here is a pic from the left half of a 40L grow tank after I removed everything but the sand and the ple...

Fish have been moved, so I do not need replies. I divided the fish into two groups and moved them. Now its on to the breeder tank. There are offspring on there from recently free swimming to over 2 inches TL. I have spotted a couple that looked pretty amazing a while back, but who knows how they mig...