Sturisoma

All posts regarding the care and breeding of these catfishes from South America.
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seven
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Sturisoma

Post by seven »

Hi all. :)

I was wondering if anybody knows how long Sturisoma spawn for?
Mine started at the end of November and :shock: haven't stopped yet. The egg batches are the same size as the first and I have about a 99% survival rate.

I know fish aren't people but I wouldn't feel too good having one child after another and another. I'm wondering if for the sake of their health I should seperate them now?
I don't want to make them unhappy - but I think I have now populated most areas of the UK with them. :lol:

Thanks.
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Post by C-Magnier »

Hi,

How do you feed the youngs?
99% is enormous :roll:

thank's for you reply!

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Post by seven »

Hi Cathy, :)

I don?t feed on the first 2 days, as the egg sacks are quite big. On day 3 I add tinned green beans and crushed flake food. After that it?s a daily diet of beans and I alternate between the flake and crushed Wardleys or Hikari algae tablets. After 2 weeks I start adding crushed shrimp pellets.

I can?t honestly say how much of each they eat ? but they grow quickly. At 4 weeks I add a whole prawn. They just kind of suck on it. I don?t add bloodworm until about 10 weeks.

I think water current plays a big part in getting these guys to eat when they are tiny. I put mine in a breeding net directly in the strong flow of the spray bar. I have noticed that when the filter gets close to needing a clean and the flow slows down ? these guys become a little sluggish and don?t move around a lot.

As they get bigger I introduce all the other fruit and veg the other plecs eat ? but beans remain the firm favourite.

Some piccy?s. :D
Showing the size difference. One fry on the back wall from the first spawn of December, with some 8 week old fry.
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/s ... frynow.jpg
One of the grow on tanks with fry from 3 different spawns.
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/s ... t=fry7.jpg
Day 2 of hatching.
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/s ... nt=3rd.jpg
2 weeks old.
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/s ... nt=2nd.jpg
Carrot isn?t a big hit.
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/s ... nt=1st.jpg
Dad on eggs.
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/s ... =Eggs4.jpg
Current grow on tank.
http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/s ... rstank.jpg

Good luck with yours. :D
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Sturisoma

Post by flash »

Hi all
mine have spawned every 10 days or so for about 2 years now .i have 1 female with 2 males .at each spawn they lay between 50 and 100 eggs .the last time she layed with both males on the same night and i had males on eggs at each end of the tank .needless to say i have tanks full of young and it can take about 4 months for them to reach saleable size .i get a much lower survival rate than you but maybe thats somthing to do with overcrowding .if they all survived id have to buy a bigger house to put more tanks in.(nice idea)
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Post by apistomaster »

Hi flash and seven, and everyone experienced raising Sturisoma sp. fry,

My Sturisoma eggs should be hatching in three or four days, June 15 or June 16. They are in a 35 gallon tank 36"LX12WX18H.
1.Are there any problems with having them the run of the tank post hatch?
2.Or do they need confinement within a net breeder and therefore shallow water; both to keep them close to the food and to avoid any depth of water problems?
3. I will have both fresh frozen Collard leaves and canned green beens on hand. Will that be enough for the the initial days and weeks of life?
4. How do you make the transition from the imminent hatching of the eggs to tranferring the fry to the net breeder?

I appreciate receiving advice based on successful experience raising these fish past the delicate beginning stages of their development. It would be nice to have things go reasonably well.

I only discovered three from their first overlooked spawn and they were never really given any attention and also had to compete with about a hundred month old Ancistrus fry. Those three fry died shortly after placing them in a net breeder using a meat baster.
Thank you,
Larry Waybright
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Post by C-Magnier »

Hi,

Apistomater! we have the same problem!

Look at them, They are so pretty :D
[img::]https://webh12.cern.ch/cmagnier/images/Sturi/couple.JPG[/img]

[img::]https://webh12.cern.ch/cmagnier/images/ ... uple_2.JPG[/img]

In fact, only one young for 3 weeks with this spawn.

But, whit 9 adult Sturisoma areum in the tank, it was sure that we had some new spawns. It's done, about 40 youngs.
The last week end we had some long power cuts and now only 5 youngs are still alive (since 19 days now).
they seem very difficult to feed. Not interessed by food (vegetables, nori). They are now with 6 youngs Farlowella cf vittata (2 inches) but I still very pessimist.
I thought what an experience with Farlowella will help me but I was wrong...

So if somebody here know how we can feed S. aureum, It would be nice...

A+

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Post by seven »

Hi. :)

I have found that my fry will not move much further than a couple of inches to find food. I have no idea as to why this is. As a result, I always move to a breeder net.
Once they are about 1.5 inches I find it ok to move them to a tank.

Also, as I said before, I find a current a must. My fry seem awfully sluggish and less inclined to feed if they are not in a direct flow.

And most importantly ? keep them away from mum ? as she?ll eat them all!

I add flake/crushed tablets as well as beans. It sticks to the side of the net and looks a bit manky ? but they will feed from it.

Good luck! :D
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Post by apistomaster »

Hi seven
I get the confinement, current and food requirements but I would like to know how you get the fry from the hatching out in the spawning tank to the net breeder. Mine are in a 3 ft tank. By the time I find them hatched they are all over the tank. I will have to track each one down and pick them up one at a time with a baster to get them inside the net breeder. Is that basically what you do?

You report an extremely high survival rate that is much higher than those of others. Only some of the plecos like Ancistrus sp.#3 have a comparable record and those have become thoroughly domesticated unlike Sturisoma. If you could just expand on what you are doing a little rather than just reporting the survival rate it would help connect the dots.

Baensch, Aquarium Atlas Vol.II, 1997 edition, reports that upon hatching at six days @28C, the fry are free swimming. I noticed the few fry that survived the many times disturbed initial spawn to be free swimming as well.

It also puzzles me why a female Sturisoma would turn pedatory towards her own fry. I have had hundreds of albino Ancistrus survive indefinitely while being kept with five Sturisoma adults without a single fry being bothered. I have posted photos on this site showing literally hundreds of these fry feeding side by side on earthworm sticks without the Sturisoma ever molesting a single fry regardless of their small size and availability. I know of no other breeder who has ever mentioned a problem in this regard.

It would be nice to establish generations of tank raised Sturisoma for the benefit of the hobby.
It is important that those of us who succeed in breeding difficult or rare fish to pass on the critical details so that others can duplicate the results in the interest of the science of aquaristics. I am trying to work out the critical details so that Sturisoma can be bred and raised with some degree of confidence and competence by more aquarists.
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Post by pleco_breeder »

Apistomaster,

I can't help as far as raising the fry. I thought I had it figured out, but am back to the drawing board myself since having had serious problems with fry survival last year myself.

However, I can tell you how I managed to collect the fry, and a lot easier than chasing them around the tank. I kept a close eye on the eggs. Once they appeared to be ready to start hatching, often after the first couple had already hatched, I would start a siphon which is nothing more than airline hose with rigid tubing. Just barely touch the egg with the rigid tubing. More often than not, the egg would bust as soon as I touched the siphon to it and the fry would just get sucked into their new tank below.

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Post by apistomaster »

Hi Larry,
I appreciate you sharing your experience. The airline siphon method was under consideration. I know that Baensch and others have mentioned that it sometimes helped to release the fry by siphon. Perhaps there is a reduction of pressure differential outside the egg membrane that assists releasing the fry and gathers them at the same time? In any case, timing has to be right.

I seriously doubt I'll ever see a Sturisoma spawn survival rate approaching 99% but whatever method of neotonate care that produces a reasonable number of long term surviving young is good.

Active, peaceful, diurnal Loricaridae as interesting as Sturisoma are well worth some effort. Despite their love of earthworm sticks there is never an algae problem on the glass or leaves in their tanks.

Now if I could just learn how to teach them to leave Discus alone they would be perfect BN alternative.

Hopefully you will get some Sturisoma going again so we can accumulate more information and experience on them.
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Post by pleco_breeder »

Larry,

I hope it's alright to use your first name as we seem to carry quite a few conversations. I was advised in another thread about using frozen collard greens. Given that I know the skill level of the partner mentioned in that thread from conversations here a few years ago, that will be my first step the next time I get the chance to try Sturisoma. Likewise, I have no qualms about recommending the same food here. I'm in the process of building an experimental rack at the moment for something that I can't go into detail about at the moment. However, I will be looking into getting a few Sturisoma and other plaque spawners going later in the year. I'm hoping to be successful with the collard method as it is much simpler than even my early techniques, but will be putting a lot of resources into solving this mystery regardless. Any input you'd like to share would be helpful.

BTW, please email me as I have some info about another fish I know you were working with that I think will save you a bit of work if you take the challenge on during the warmer months of the year.

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Post by seven »

Hello. :)

I do the same as Pleco_breeder, and just use tubing (from my gravel siphon) to collect them. It?s a bit fiddly. I siphon them into a bucket, as I don?t get a good flow if I siphon to tank height. I then stand on a chair and siphon them again from the bucket into the breeding net. (Which is in the same tank they spawned in.) Once the fry reach about 2cm, I separate them into 3 or 4 breeding nets so that they have more room.

The fry hatch 7 days after being laid ? almost to the minute. So if they start spawning at 9pm on a Saturday, I simply hang around the tank the following week at 9, with my tubing. Interestingly, it?s always at about that time. You?d think it would be during the night when it?s darker. ?
The eggs are always laid on the internal filter. When they hatch, they nearly always stay on the filter so it?s easy to grab them. I have also experienced ready to hatch eggs bursting, and fry being sucked from the egg as I was capturing another fry.
It really worried me at first, but the fry survive.

I have never witnessed mum eating fry myself. I was warned about this by people on here and on Plecofanatics. So as a result ? have never left them together to see what happens.

Some spawns, I have no loses. Occasionally I have one, and once I lost 2. These deaths occurred within a couple of hours of hatching.
I also lost 5 fry from my grow on tank a while ago. My heater died and I ended up with white spot. Though I have a feeling that it was the Protozin that killed them and not the white spot, as the deaths occurred within an hour of the tank being treated.
My only other loses have been if I was working a night shift and not there to collect them ? as this is a community tank and they get eaten.
I also lost one complete batch of eggs to an opportunist L47. Which was odd, as he never touched other spawns, and hasn?t done again since.

I can?t explain my success, as I have never tried to breed anything ? not even BN.
And to be completely honest, I didn?t even realise until they spawned that I had a pair. :oops: The male didn?t fill out or grow a beard until after the first spawn. I hadn?t, and still don?t do anything different to try and induce spawning.

I have discovered something over the past 2 weeks, that isn?t exactly related, but I thought I?d mention it. I don?t use RO water or anything special. Simple tap water with Tetra Aqua Safe as dechlorinator. I got to visit some babies that I rehomed recently, and others have posted pictures on PF and stayed in touch.
The fry that have been rehomed to those that use RO, seem to grow much faster than those of us that don?t use it. While mine appear to be thriving, I?m wondering if they prefer RO ? and maybe those without as high a survival rate could try switching.

Also, those that have them in RO tanks, also keep theirs at much higher temperatures than I do. Maybe that speeds up growth? Mine are spawned at 25.8. My grow on tank is 26.2, only because I can?t seem to get an exact match.
I got 3 L46 at the weekend and have added 6, 2 inch fry to their tank, which is rather warmer at 28. I plan to keep an eye on them and see how it affects their growth.

Lastly, as this has turned out to be rather epic. Sorry!
It should be noted that Shane has said that these are a long finned Sturisoma species that haven?t as yet been scientifically described. It?s possible that these guys are just much more hardy than other species.
I consider myself a complete novice and realise that the survival rate is probably predominantly sheer luck. Which I realise must be slightly annoying (and I apologise!) to breeders who try to actively spawn them.
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Post by apistomaster »

Hi seven,
Now we're cookin'.
No need to apologize I prodded you for details and I feel like you helped fill in much info that I find helpful.
We have the distinct possibility that we are all working with different species of Sturisoma. Cathy has fish with spotted bellies, mine are light plain colored, you have a longer finned species than either Cathy or myself.
This may actually be a serendipitous circumstance as it is reasonable to expect some differences in the fish. One of these may be better suited to captive breeding than another.

The temperature and hatching time relationship is good to know.

I also appreciate knowing how you collected the fry and handled them afterwards.
plecobreeder and I have compared some notes, the Baensch account and it had to be some method that was workable. Timing will depend on temp and species and luck but I can live with that. Siphoning made the most sense but I could see having to chase them down with a baster if necessary.

I definitely planned on using the net breeders set up in the breeding tank.

There are many reasons why the fish that have gone to others grew faster. It is something most Loricaridae have in common that less competition for space and food,and the warmer temps all favor good growth.
I am not going to be too quick to attribute the RO water as being particularly significant. it may be more coincidental. At the risk of generalizing I think most aquarists who invest in RO filters tend to be serious enough about their fish as to provide better than average care. Not that you aren't caring enough, it is obvious that you are, it is not easy to grow fish in lots at the same rate as if they were a few pampered specimens.
Let's just keep adding to our collective data from each spawning group. Maybe work on getting more photos that can be compared and maybe identified to species level so we can flush out the cat-e-log data base even more.

Sturisoma are really too cool to not take advantage of their willingness o breed in cptivity.
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Post by syno321 »

Seven and the rest of you contributing to this thread: please don't feel like you are over-extending a thread. Not when so much good, practical information is exchanged. It is info like this that is one of the strengths of this great web-site! Keep it up!
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Post by C-Magnier »

Hi,

The 9 fishes are Sturisoma aureum, imported from Columbia.
It seems that the differents species of Sturisoma have not the same needs.

The first spawn came 3 weeks after they arrived in their tank. It's this tank :
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... hp?t=20103

To get the fry, I'm just waiting... They will go in surface, on the front of the tank, in the pump swift. Then I take it with a little glass and put them in the same nursery as you can see in the F. vittata topic.
I can feed them for 3 weeks, and they die :(
I saw some of them eating... I dont understand.

What can be missing????

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Post by seven »

Hello. :)

Do you ever find yourself awake at 3am with wandering thoughts and have an idea? Well, I?m wondering?

Cathy uses a clear plastic breeding trap, and I use the mesh nets. I?m wondering if this has anything to do with it? The clear plastic boxes usually look nice and clean in pictures I?ve seen ? while my nets really do look quite awful sometimes and is the reason I don?t post many young fry pictures!
The food sticks to all 5 sides and looks horrible, but the fry do feed from it, and because it?s all over it, the fry don?t have to move far to find food.
I would also guess that maybe there is more water movement through the nets?

Don?t get me wrong. I keep my tanks as clean as possible. At the moment I am doing at least 5 water changes a week in this tank, as I considered this tank to be fully stocked before the arrival of fry and am really conscious of the extra load with all the nets. I remove beans and siphon the base of the net daily, but only do the sides about once a week. (I get really nervous doing it and am always convinced I?m going to damage tiny fry by pinning them to the opposite side of the net with the suction. I siphon the base from inside the net, but do the sides from the outside. If that makes sense? )

I only have the nets as my LFS doesn?t have the plastic box type. Maybe I should invest in one and divide a spawn between them and compare the survival rate?

I could be totally wrong about this, it?s just I?ve been trying to look at differences, and so far (with the exception of different fish) this seems to be the main difference.
Maybe fry do a little better if the surrounding area isn?t as spotless as the way in which we would usually keep our tanks?
Just thinking aloud, so to speak.

I have my fingers crossed for you both.
Sam. :)
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Post by pleco_breeder »

Hello,

Those of you who know me well, know that I don't keep too many traditional tanks. Most of my fish are raised in plastic totes. The last post, talking about the cleanliness issue, reminded me of something that I noticed a couple years ago when working with L10. I siphoned the fry from the tank, just like with the Sturisoma, into a 5 gallon tote for grow-out. Within an hour, they fry had all squeezed between the filter foam and the base trying to hide. As a result, I placed a piece of drifwood mounted on slate in the tank, and released the fry. After that, I went to strictly airstone with no filter to prevent fry being trapped.

Within a week, even though I was cleaning most of the tank bottom, a layer of mulm had built up under the slate and all the fry were staying hidden there along with old green beans, fish waste, and various copepods, daphnia, and other water "bugs". This managed to raise better than 50 fry.

The next spawn, I got overly uptight, and chose not to put the driftwood in the tank. I just kept the bottom covered with food and did a couple water changes a day. That spawn failed to raise any fry to sellable size even though the same foods were present. I'm not trying to compare these 2 genera, but I'm curious if the amount of cover afforded by the slate and driftwood didn't afford that these fish were more comfortable with moving and eating. In afterthought, I seem to recall that they didn't want to move around too much while there was no cover available either.

Since that experiment, I've raised all my Rineloricaria species in tanks with a reasonably large piece of slate and had a lot more consistent results. I can't even begin to speculate a full reason why at this time.

This is just speculation, but does seem to have a few too many coincidences with the genera being discussed.

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Post by pleco_farmer »

My pair, Sturisoma barbatum, has been spawning continually for five years now.

I've had best results with fry in a 20g tank, plenty of driftwood with java fern and anubias, sponge filters and plenty of algae. No current, and frozen collard greens for feed. Based on numbers of surviving fry, it is very doubtful that the female is eating the fry.
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Post by apistomaster »

This is my follow up of what has become of my first Sturisoma aureum fry.
I did not siphon the newly hached fry as I had originally planned. Instead the fry were left in the breeding tank with the adults. No predation has occured and I stll have all of the 65-75 fry that hatched out on 16 June 07. They all stayed stationary at the waterline and close to the upwelling of an airstone. Now they are exploring the range of all depths of the tank.

I did not provide them with any collard greens or canned green beans. I did add a worm feeding cone in which I placed the earthworm sticks I usually feed to the adult to both the feeder and the general area of the tank bottom. At any given moment, there are many fry grazing the feeding cone containing the earthworm sticks.
There are always some fry that do hang on the earthworm stick filled feeder while others are attempting to find food by cleaning the glass panes and the potted Echinodorus bleheri sword plant.
I am hoping that with each passing day that their chances of surival increases. Here is a crude photo of the fry feeding on the worm feeder full of earthworm sticks:
Image

The earthworm sticks become expanded and very soft within an hour or so of soaking in the water. It is a food that has worked with common Ancistrus sp.3 reliably in the past. I would say that if the fry live ten days it would indicate that the fry are feeding. This would be great because it would simplifly raising Sturisoma in captivity
The earthwork sticks and flakes are available from a couple of USA sources in the USA and at least one source in the UK in case these Sturisoma fry are shown to be able to survive on these foods as well as the adults.
My source of these foods is http://www.aquaticeco.com.
I'll continue to post the results of my non-traditional approach whether this is a successful method or not. I am really hoping that it is not necessary to collect the fry and have to offer them the fresh vegetables. My experience has been that Sturisoma do eat algae but show a distinct preference for the earthworm based foods and live blackworms.
This a photo taken during the spawning that resulting fry shown above.
Image
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Post by apistomaster »

I am finding that placing the earthworm sticks in a 300 micron filter media bag with a small stone inside to weight it down is working much better than the worm feeder. The Sturisoma fry are still able to obtain food but the food does not become dispersed . At any moment more than half the fry are all over the bag feeding.

I also have to feed the adults and the sticks are just tossed in per usual. The rest of the fry not already on the "feed bag" are able to scrounge bits of scrap from the food given to the adults.

Hi Cathy,
How did things go with your hatch? We were on a similar timeline.
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Post by apistomaster »

Here is a photo of the week old Sturisoma fry feeding on the earthworm sticks turned to mush inside a 300 micron media bag. They are able to obtain fine grain size bits of the earthworm mush on a constant basis. So far this method appears to be working. It is my hope that this will replace the use of collard greens and canned green beans.
Image

I woke up to find a new spawn, just fifteen days after the one from which the fry shown were from.
Image
Also an overview of the breeding tank. I am using very stong currents and aereation.
Image
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Post by flash »

Hi all
i have hundreds of sturisoma fry now and i find the best way is to seperate the young as soon as they hatch i put them in a 12 inch cube with a songe filter at 80 degrees .i tried to leave them with the parents but i lost most of the young.i never saw mum or dad eat any but i did once see a batch of eggs destroyed by a different female while the male was feeding .so now i keep the females apart but can keep more than one male with one female no probs.as for feeding. sturisoma come from fast flowing rivers so they sit and wait for the food to come to them i get around this by overfeeding and daily 50% water changes
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Interests: Aquaculture and flyfishing

Post by apistomaster »

From what I have observed the Sturisoma fry do need or at least enjoy a good deal of current in their tank. In the 35 gallon mine are breeding in and that the fry share, I have two pumps circulating a combined flow of 450 gph. The fry handily get a round in the strong flows. It is still early but preliminary results of feeding earthworm stick mush from a 300 micron filter media bags contains the food so it is easy to assure that there is only fresh food available at all times and prevents unwanted pollution. I replace the food and make a partial water change daily.

I have been unable to buy collard greens despite trying since the first spawn over two weeks ago. It is not a commonly stocked green in this isolated corner of the USA. That has helped force my hand to seek viable alternative foods.

It is too early to know if this diet is adequate for the long term survival but then again the fry have almost doubled their length in one week. I take that as a good sign. My breeders are wild caught fish. I gather that tank raised Sturisoma are more commonly available in the UK. That isn't the case in the USA.
If I get a good survival rate it will only be a matter of time before I will have tank raised replacement breeding stock. I did not want to use the time tested collard greens and canned green beans if I can avoid it because pollution would be more difficult to manage. Another reason is that my breeders have always shown a preference for the earthworm based food and live blackworms. If the same holds true for the juveniles(and so far they do seem to find it an acceptable food) I would expect a good growth and survival rate.
If all this theorizing pans out then I will expand my production to a more commercial level.
My adult fish have shown only indifference to their fry.
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Location 1: Clarkston, WA, USA
Location 2: Clarkston, WA, USA
Interests: Aquaculture and flyfishing

Post by apistomaster »

I have been wondering how the different Sturisoma projects are coming along. There seemed to be several of us working with a variety of species but I haven't seen any updates. I hope there has been some success with all of them. I am anticipating my fourth but only third planned spawning any day.

The fry from the first two spawns from my fish are still alive although a few of the weaker fish have died along the way, the majority continue to grow. I have used almost exclusively earthworm sticks with an occasional offering of dried seaweed and algae wafers. The fry have shown a strong preference for the mush of earthworm sticks over any other foods. I did go looking for collard greens but never found any to try on them.
Mine like the sticks well enough and they roughly double their sizes at two weeks post spawn. My first fry are about 3/4 in/2cm long. They are so delicate looking; thin little sticks with plump abdomens.

I did modify my feeding method recently from using filter media bags to hold the food to a net breeder with large cut outs around the perimeter to provide easy access for the fry to what is a feeding platform. This allows me to offer a larger variety of foods. Maybe they will find something else they like as much as the earthworm sticks? So far they eat much like the breeders except the fry are too small to eat live blackworms. I plan on giving them a portion of live blackworms finely minced with a razor blade. Hoping to find foods that promote faster growth.
Avid Trout fly fisherman. ·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
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