L260 unusual egg laying location?

[MarcW]

Hi All,

I've not had much luck with breeding my

L260

, I have found one juvenile in the tank but without any other evidence of breeding, I have had them for about 18 months.

They are a group of 5, sold as 2M:2F but I think there is only 1 female, who always looks gravid, plus the ~1 inch TL juvenile.

This morning I looked into their tank (they are the only inhabitants), and there is a clutch of ~20 eggs just under some bogwood, despite them having a cave each!

Would a gravid female release eggs if the males weren't interested in breeding? Currently they look fertile to me, so maybe they just didn't like the caves!

There is water flow over the eggs, but I think to avoid them being eaten I should place them in a tumbler?

[MarcW]

I have moved the eggs to an egg tumbler and they are gently bouncing around.

While doing this I noticed that the female was being trapped in a cave, so I am thinking a possible explanation for the eggs being under the wood is that they were kicked out of a cave, by either a rival male, or an inexperience male who was fanning them too enthusiastically!

[Jobro]

Hey Marc,

my L260 seem to lose their eggs a lot as well Don't know what's wrong with them.

Sadly there is usually only 1 or 2 left when I find them...

[bekateen]

Some eggs getting kicked out and "snagged" under a log is a reasonable explanation. No matter, they look healthy. Good luck with them, and may the cave give you more.

Cheers, Eric

[MarcW]

Thanks for the replies.

Given the location of the cave with the trapping, it would make sense that they were kicked out under the wood, its only 3 inches from the mouth of the cave.

This is the first time I've tried to raise from eggs myself, should I remove the fry from the tumbler as soon as they become wrigglers, or let them absorb the yolk sac first before moving them.

I plan to move them to a small 2.5g tank which has yet to be setup, but I have some small 3x3 inch seasoned sponge filters, to use. If they are best left in the parents tank I have a small breeding trap I can use, but I'm a bit wary of that as none of my L128 fry I put in it at the wriggler stage (in their parents tank) survived, only the free range ones.

Thanks for everyone's help.

[bekateen]

I would imagine that their care should be similar to that for other plecos like

Panaqolus maccus

, except the food will need to be a little less woody and a little more meaty.

With clown pleco fry, I would sometimes take the fry from the dad's cave right just before the fry are finished with their yolk sacs. I would suspend a fry net inside the parents' tank with a powerhead/recirculating pump and an airstone mounted about 1-2" away, pointed at the side of the net so there's a good current with air bubbles blasting against the net all the time. I add a smooth round riverstone to weigh down the floor of the net, so that air bubbles don't lift it up, then I put a few very small wood pieces from parents' tank into the net, along with a few dried oak leaves. After that's all set up, then I add the fry.

Info on my efforts are here: Re: Sexing Panaqolus maccus? Spawning at last!

First foods were (1) pulverized dry foods (algae wafers, flakes, freeze-dried worms and shrimp, and NLS Thera A+ pellets, all mixed together) and (2) small THIN slices of raw sweet potato. As they grow, then I'd start adding intact algae wafers. If you have Repashy mixes, bottom scratcher, spawn & grow, and soylent green should be good, I would expect, but I haven't tried them with fry.

Good luck, Eric

[MarcW]

Thanks for the detail Eric, very helpful, I'll take a read through your thread.

For now I'll plan to leave them in the tumbler until their yolk is almost gone, then make a mesh/net breeder box like you described.

I have similar foods to those you listed, as well as several repashy mixes, the adult L260 like meat pie in particular. So should be able to mix up some appropriate food for the fry.

[MarcW]

Overnight a few eggs have turned white, and a couple have fungus.

I've tried to remove the fungused ones with tweezers, however they are firmly stuck to each other and I have been unable to fully remove the fungus for fear of damaging the other eggs.

Any tips on separating the eggs to make removing bad ones easier?

[MarcW]

Throughout the day most of the eggs have fungused. I now only have three left which I managed to separate, it took some effort the adhesion between them is impressive. They are in a new tumbler with more air to try and keep them clean.

[Jobro]

Throughout the day most of the eggs have fungused. I now only have three left which I managed to separate, it took some effort the adhesion between them is impressive. They are in a new tumbler with more air to try and keep them clean.

Again, same experience here. When I put a clutch of 40-50 L134 eggs in my tumbler, almost all of them will hatch. But with the few L260 eggs I find, they usually all go bad within a few days. I really don't understand what's up with them. No luck on my side anyways with these fish

[MarcW]

Strange that we are having the same experience, the three remaining don't look good, there appears to be a small amount of fungus on them, I'll leave them for now and see what happens. I have also had good hatch rates with

L134

, they were the first catfish which bred for me, there were about 30 young from their first spawn, maybe 1 or 2 eggs went bad.

I do have one juvenile now, but only saw it when it was an inch long, so I guess it was looked after by the male and snuck into a hiding place for a few weeks before I saw it. I always want to leave the eggs with the male, but in this case he seemed to abandon them. Hopefully next time they will be better parents!

[MarcW]

The remaining three eggs have now got fungus. Hopefully next time the male will keep the eggs in the cave!

[Jobro]

Sorry to hear that.

[TwoTankAmin]

Two thoughts here.

First, if you elevate the front of the cave slightly by putting a piece of slate or a flat stane under it, eggs are less likely to come out.

Second, are you sure the eggs in your picture were fertilized? Did you see tiny eyes inside the shell? I cannot tell from the pic that the eggs were viable. I am not sure I am correct here.

[MarcW]

I do need to elevate the caves, I think you may have made the same suggestion when I said my L128 were losing a lot of eggs. I've elevated their caves, but no male has gone back in to a cave for more than a couple minutes since then .

I did think I could see something within the eggs but can't be sure I saw any eyes. I thought that if they weren't fertilised they would go white? They remained yellow, even after a day or two covered in fungus.

[TwoTankAmin]

I am not sure how unusual that is. I had the same issue with discus. I got infertile but yellow eggs. It took a few days for them all to turn white, but they always did.

I just had a pleco spawn where a few eggs came out. I got them back in, then elevated the front and all continued fine. I doubt that putting a slight tilt to the cave stopped the spawning.

Edit to include a strange place to spawn (by common tank strain bn)

They spawned inside the sponge filter because of the donut shaped bubbler I used instead of the traditional cross piece.

[MarcW]

I'll have to keep an eye on the eggs if they spawn again, I thought if they were yellow they were fertilised.

I only elevated the cave after the wrigglers had left, I guess the male didn't like the disturbance to his house! He still goes in during water changes but doesn't spend more than a couple minutes in there. Although he was the only male who ever caved out of three, maybe L128 males don't cave unless they are ready to spawn?

[MarcW]

They have spawned again and the eggs ended up in the same location, because I didn't get around to raising the cave entrance. I put the eggs in a small container floating in the tank with an alder cone and air line, changing the water a few times per day.

They all fungused again but took about twice as long as without the alder cone. I have now raised the entrance of the cave by tying a piece of airline tubing around the cave entrance, simple but effective!

Hopefully they spawn again and the raised entrance will allow the male to look after the eggs in the cave.

I've attached a few pictures, I'm not sure the eggs were fertilised? The male was still trapping the female when I found the eggs, I think he may have been too eager and kicked them out when trying to move the female out.

[TwoTankAmin]

Pleco eggs are normally golden when they are "laid." When they are not fertile they will not all go white at the same time, it can take a couple of days.

There are a number of reasons eggs are not viable. One is they start out that way- i.e. they are defective. Next males can be the issue, he may be shooting blanks. Then there is the whole new to it all factor. they can mess up the fertilization or there are problems with an inexperienced dad re raising them. Finally, there is the issue with having a group with both sexes. The top female spawns with the top male. Often a secondary female, or even a tertiary ranked one, will wait for the chance to eat the eggs or wigglers if the dad tries to sneak out for a bite to eat. Once on eggs, he will normally not allow another female into the cave until the current spawn has been booted as free swimmers. Sometime a second female with eggs will get in quickly enough and there is a double spawn. But the odds for this decreases pretty fast after the first batch of eggs is laid and fertilized. I have yet to experience this as far as i have seen.

The lower ranked female, by destroying the spawn, may get a chance to spawn herself before the alpha female is ready to go again. One method for dealing with this is to set up pairs to spawn rather than working with a colony. But this can take more space and there will be no chance that one pair spawning can set off another duo to go as well.

Also, when I have had to pull eggs, I usually did so into a 2.5 gal tank. This let me dose an anti-fungal like Meth. Blue or Maroxy to help ward off fungus. I also like to keep the hatching tank on the dark side. An old cory breeder told me to do this in my very early days with fish. I took him at his word but cannot confirm any scientific basis for doing this. But common sense tells me that a pleco cave is a pretty dark place and its where they usually go through the trip from egg to free swimming.

Good luck with the spawn.

[pleco_breeder]

The artificial hatching info given by TTA is accurate, and worth a try if needed. However, I'll add that the best method is to allow dad to do the hatching for you. I've had several males over the years which just couldn't seem to keep a batch in their cave. However, they would consistently watch over spawns which were simply put back in the cave. It can be a bit difficult to work the eggs past the male in a tight cave, but is usually possible if the cave is held vertically for a few seconds. Some males will continue to kick the spawn, I assume through inexperience, but don't seem to be thrown by putting the eggs back in the cave.

It's rare that this is 100% effective, and does suffer losses. However, I can't recall a spawn which was completely lost when the eggs were returned in a relatively timely manner.

Larry Vires

[MarcW]

Thanks for the responses, I did consider trying to put them back in the cave I'll try that if it happens again.

I think I have one female, they were sold as two pairs however three of them are now very hairy!

I'll try to get hold of some meth blue in case it happens again and I can't get the eggs back in the cave.

Thanks again.

[Jobro]

On my last L260 spawn, I found a single egg. I put it into a breeder box and a few days later it actually hatched. after one or two days the fry just died... I feel like L260 are really tough to be raised artificially. Other fry rarely dies after spawn on me...

However, I got 11 healthy fry out of the fathers cave a week later or so. It's siblings all survived, but the one dropped out of the cave died

Dad:

fry about 7-10 days after hatching

Fry 10 days later (with some H. Contradens fry)

[MarcW]

They have spawned again, and once again the male has kicked the eggs, despite the cave entrance being raised, he doesn't seem to be cut out to care for a spawn!

I have tried to put the eggs back with the male, however he refuses to leave the cave and I don't want to hurt him by removing forcefully, I placed the eggs in the cave near his tail, to see if he could manoeuvre around them, but later kicked them out again. I've repeated this three times so far.

For now they are in a floating breeding trap with a decent flow of water over them, hopefully I have more luck this time!

[bekateen]

Good luck with the new eggs. I suspect that eventually dad will step up and do it right. If he doesn't after a few more spawns, either he is just a "defective dad" or there is something else in the tank disturbing him. At that point, I'd consider examining the tank for other distractions - other tank mates, lighting, household noises and activities that might be scaring him.

Cheers, Eric

[MarcW]

Thanks Eric!

I suspect he isn't a great dad! Every time there has been a spawn, I have gone into the room in the morning to see the eggs against the glass. It's in my study so there is no light or activity overnight. L260 are the only inhabitants on the tank, when I have more room (tanks!) I think I'll remove the alpha male and let one of the others attempt to spawn, I have a feeling they couldn't do a worse job!

I'm going to try and get some methylene blue to use as a last resort if the eggs start to fungus, I'll move them to a separate container for that, but no where around me sells it so I suspect I'll have to order some on Monday to arrive on Tuesday. If this goes the same as previous spawns the eggs will all be bad by then.

Still I'm hoping that with every spawn I'll have a little more success than the last!

[bekateen]

Sounds like a plan, Marc.

You might also consider simply "rearranging the furniture" in the tank: Take all the fish out, move the caves and other decor to alter the landscape in the tank, then add the fish back.

This action can disrupt existing social structures, diminishing negative influences of dominant fish and potentially giving subordinate males a chance to find suitable spawning territory for themselves. Unless your group is already spawning frequently (which I glean they aren't), it won't hurt anyone to disrupt them for a short time, and might help in the long run. It worked for me with my clown plecos.

Cheers, Eric

[MarcW]

Sounds like a good idea Eric, I'll see how these eggs develop, if I lose them all, then I'll do as you suggest, and rehome them for a few minutes while I change the tank around.

[Jobro]

Marc, did you use the daily waterchange methode to get a spawn now? Or was it more randomly?

L260 seem to be really tough for me as well. I realized, that only one of my 4 males actually manages to raise fry successfully, the rest kicks them out or I find an abandoned cave with dead fry inside.

I also had not much luck with artificial breeding so far.

[MarcW]

This just happened out of the blue, I did my 50% water change as usual on Wednesday, then found the eggs Friday morning, the water change dropped the water temperature by 3-4 Celsius as it normally does.

The female has been very gravid for a couple of months now, so I guess it was only a matter of time before they spawned.

I have lost two eggs to fungus so far, I managed to find some API Pimafix locally so I put the eggs in a separate container floating in the parents tank with a few drops of it to try and prevent fungus, I'll see if that has worked in the morning.

They seem to be so tough for me to raise too, I've never had an egg hatch when I've looked after them, the one fry which did survive a spawn was cared for by a male in a cave, just out of luck I guess, whichever male is spawning seems pretty useless .

[MarcW]

Well the API Pimafix didn't help!

These eggs had the worst fungus I've seen, all looked good last night then this morning there was so much fungus I could barely see eggs!

I've attached some pictures below, I tried to clean off the fungus to get some pictures of the eggs. As far as I can tell there are no signs of development, so could all of these be infertile? Weirdly the eggs seemed in good condition beneath the fungus is that normal?

I have some methylene blue arriving today, I may add a couple drops to a container and add a few eggs I managed to excavate from the fungus to see if anything happens.

I think I really need to move things around to try and let another male have a go at spawning, I'm not having much luck with them!