Pseudohemiodon apithanos breeding

[NielsV]

Here they are around six weeks old. The biggest is around 2.5cm and the smallest 1.8cm.


A total picture of the tank i just took just a few minutes ago.

[Jools]

Brilliant pic!

Jools

[anton l.]

wow! nice tank!
the plecos are really unusual
especially the colour and when they carry the eggs in their mouth it whould be interesting to see how they spawn.are they hard to breed?
i see the fry are different colours,does it remain to adult size?

[Narwhal72]

The head width difference is really interesting in the fry. The one pictured on the left seems to have a considerably wider head to body length ratio compared to the one on the right? Is that a sign of sexual dimorphism at such a young age?

It will be interesting to see what they grow up into.

Thanks for the information on the food!

Andy

[Norman]

Hi Niels,

Here they are around six weeks old. The biggest is around 2.5cm and the smallest 1.8cm.

I am sorry but this is too small for this age.
With arround one month they should have reached a size of at leat 3,5cm. Most other species in the releationship of P. apithanos are growing faster, but 2 or 2,5cm is too less. I think they didn't got enough food in the first important days.

Yesterday i chanched 50% water and a hour later i saw them spawning.

Fortunately P. apithanos is very easy to spawn, but unfortunately it's absolutely not easy to raise the fry.

so long
Norman

[anton l.]

Fortunately P. apithanos is very easy to spawn, but unfortunately it's absolutely not easy to raise the fry

doesnt the male raise the fry carrying them in his mouth?
ive also noticed that 2,5 is too small.maybe next batch will grow better,i usualy feed the fry on artemia and it really helps to raise them (it has plenty of proteins 70%)

[Norman]

Hi Anton,

doesnt the male raise the fry carrying them in his mouth?

Yes, thats right. What I meant is the growing up of the fry. Most fry die suddenly before they reach a size of 5cm.

maybe next batch will grow better,i usualy feed the fry on artemia and it really helps to raise them

Meanwhile I resign feeding freshly hatched brine shrimps. Instead of this they get crushed discus granulate as well as crushed brine shrimp sticks.

so long
Norman

[anton l.]

i think thats the problem of slow growing.
one of my friends also fed fry with dry granules or wafers and the fry ended up growing to 2 cm in a month.when he started feeding them with artemia the growth level encreased a lot.probably in the wild the fry raise on different sorts of daphnia and microscopic shrimps that are so common in summer.
its wierd for them to die at 5cm..does this happen with other breeders?

[Norman]

Hi Anton,

I think you misunderstood something.
I didn't recognized a difference between feeding the fry fleshly hatched brine shrimps or crushed dry food of high quality. So I reduced the efford feeding them well. That is my experience breeding 6 different species of the Pseudohemidon-group.

It happens to most breeders that the fry will die before they reach a size of 5cm.
I don't know if that will happen to me. I can tell you more in 1 or 2 month. Some less days ago the first fry of my P. apithanos hatched and for a next batch of eggs hatching is near.

so long
Norman

[anton l.]

cool,congrats!
thanks for information,i`ll be waiting for updates.

Anton

[NielsV]

Hi Niels,

Here they are around six weeks old. The biggest is around 2.5cm and the smallest 1.8cm.

I am sorry but this is too small for this age.
With arround one month they should have reached a size of at leat 3,5cm. Most other species in the releationship of P. apithanos are growing faster, but 2 or 2,5cm is too less. I think they didn't got enough food in the first important days.

Yesterday i chanched 50% water and a hour later i saw them spawning.

Fortunately P. apithanos is very easy to spawn, but unfortunately it's absolutely not easy to raise the fry.

so long
Norman

The problem is, i feed them in the morning around 5 o'clock and than i go to work. And 9/10 hours later im home again. Thats a long time without food for young fish. Thats another problem why they are to small.

What kind of food and brand would you recommend me?

[Norman]

Hi Niels,

What kind of food and brand would you recommend me?

In the past I had very good results with OSI Shrimp Pellets. At the moment I try NewEra Diskus Pellets.
P. lamina are growing fastly with both.
The fry of P. thorectes and P. apithanos are too jung at the moment to tell anything about growing with Diskus Pellets of NewEra.

But I always raise the fry always in a steril nursery case wich I have to clean twice a day. The growing in such a case is much better than in a large tank.

so long
Norman

[Jools]

I used crushed Tetra prima or now JBL discus granules. They work really well but overfeeding will kill young and adults as the food seems to swell inside them.

Jools

[apistomaster]

I have never lost any but when I last raised some domestic Discus they would gulp Tetra Color Granules too fast.
Then the food would swell and the resulting pressure pushed against their swim bladder and that would throw off their equilibrium for awhile. They were in a lot of distress until the food moved along.
I still feed this food to my Discus but I always pre-soak it for five minutes first. This procedure eliminated the problem.

[Norman]

Hi Jools,

I used crushed Tetra prima or now JBL discus granules. They work really well but overfeeding will kill young and adults as the food seems to swell inside them.

Because fry of P. apithanos as well as P. sp. "Marbled" are very aggressive while feeding. In a short time they feed as much as they can. If that food will swell it could be problematic. Thats why I try now the Diskus Pellets of NewEra. This food doesn't swell and is very well accepted.

so long
Norrie

[zipper]

I've had these fish for a about two and a half years now and they are entering their third spawning season. The longest I've been able to keep the fry alive was 6 months. They really are sensitive to water quality and overfeeding. I chronically get busy and neglect my husbandry duties and my young apithanos pay the price. My L. sp. Atabapo and Sturisoma fry are much more forgiving. This time around, I am passing on my fry to a friend who is much more diligent than I. Hopefully is as lucky.

[Norman]

Hi,

The longest I've been able to keep the fry alive was 6 months.

Can you please tell us the size of the offsprings with about 6 month?
At this age they should have reached a size of more than 10cm.

so long
Norman

[zipper]

they were much smaller than that. They may have reached 7 cm but my memory might be stretching that a bit. They were painfully slow growing.
I would share some pictures, but they are stuck on my broken computer.

[apistomaster]

they were much smaller than that. They may have reached 7 cm but my memory might be stretching that a bit. They were painfully slow growing.
I would share some pictures, but they are stuck on my broken computer.

You do know that a Mom and Pop Computer store can recover your files from the broken computer's hard drive, right? I just had a local shop put all my photos from an old computer on a 4.7GB DVD-R disc.

[NielsV]

Norman do you have a album at planet? I already visit your "my aquaria".

[Norman]

Hi Niels,

Not yet about the fry.
But I want to make a little diary of photos raising P. apithanos fry taken every week.

so long
Norman

[Jools]

Norman do you have a album at planet? I already visit your "my aquaria".

At the right hand side of any of Norman's posts, you will see some links, one of them says "my images".

Cheers,

Jools

[Norman]

I enhanced I picture of a fry consumed the yolk sack.
So they start feeding with a size of about 17mm.

so long
Norman

[Norman]

With about 2 weeks the fry measures around 25mm.

[NielsV]

Breeding Apithanos is .

Hmm that type of 'paper' is very handy. I have to buy that also.

At this moment i have only 5 young apithanos, the rest died. But the next clutch is almost there.

[Norman]

3 weeks after hatching the fry reach about 3cm

[NielsV]

Spawning P.Apithanos

[Norman]

Very nice, Niels!

[Jools]

Great video Niels, would be a great one to add to the site...

Jools

[Phyllonemus]

Hi Niels, great tank setup an very nice catfish specimens .

What are you going to do with the youngsters ?