Mol_PMB wrote:There are hundreds of them at Pier Aquatics at the moment.

I think this member is in the USA, and if so, Pier Aquatics won't be any help. But, I do see these occasionally even in our big-box pet stores (as much as I don't like their fish). They are also sold on Aquabid.com.

Cheers, Eric

If you do decide to remove the battered pleco, let it heal, and then you want to reintroduce it to the same tank, I advise you do it in this way: Remove wounded fish to a different tank and allow it time to heal its fins. Based on what I've seen in other injured fish, I see no reason here why you sh...

Since your tank is a "high" design and has a smaller footprint than a typical 15 gal, then maybe so - as Mol_PMB suggested, the tank bottom might be too crowded with bottom-dwelling fish. But if that option is problematic for you (e.g., you don't have another tank to move the Ancistrus to)...

Wow, awesome job! (both to you and to your banjos).

Does your Ancistrus use the cave? Is your Ancistrus male or female? If your Ancistrus is a common bristle nose, then at 7cm (total length, I assume) it may not be full grown but it's not a juvenile, it's an adult; my male albino BN first spawned at that size, and my female was only a little larger. ...

Does your ancistrus have any caves to hide in (preferably more than 1)?

Agreed about the hard work of our admins. But don't hesitate to suggest ideas when you have them. If you think about it, the Suggestions forum itself is a type of wish list - Members have ideas and they file them in the forum. Admins can weigh the workload to develop vs. merits (costs and benefits),...

The wish list seems a good idea, one of the reasons that comes to mind is if someone is breeding a fish and its on someone else's list the are able to sell the fish to them. Teresa, that's an interesting extension of the wish list concept - a veritable "match-dot-com" of breeders and buye...

Let me be clear that I've never used actinic or black lights on aquaria, so I am not specifically endorsing one or the other over conventional red or blue LEDs for dim light effects. The idea of floating cover (plants, etc) is a good one as long as the floating plants don't get sucked into and clog ...

To clarify my previous comment, I had to look it up. When we're talking about depths like those in aquaria, UV light penetrates just fine - there is some loss, but not enough to call it safe. That said, of course, there are different ranges of UV light, A, B, and C. UV-A is the least harmful, and th...

I think @Jools means to say, use open tubes, not caves closed at one end. But maybe I'm misinterpreting.

Cheers, Eric

My mustard spots do it, as do my guahiborums and ABNs. I don't think it's spawning related, but it seems perfectly normal in my tanks.

Cheers, Eric

Okay, no problem. It is less cluttered without it. I'll accept your judgment. Thanks for the explanation.

Cheers, Eric

I would guess they mean near-IR. Even it it was near-UV, that doesn't penetrate water very far, does it? I don't know what's available as a tank light.

Hi Jools, This may be nothing, but I think something has disappeared from my BLOG page: When I view a BLOG page for other members, beside each species name there is the link, "Show spawning report." Others BLOG pages.png When I view my own BLOG page, beside each species name there is the l...

Viktor Jarikov wrote:.To top it off, there were two paroons in there too.

What impresses me is that you can tell the difference! Other than perhaps the pointy dorsal fin (which may not be right either), the paroons and IDS look alike to me in these pics. LOL

Trust me. Perhaps not the actual "next" time, but sooner or later it will work. And each time the female lays eggs, remember she is older over time and more mature - egg count will rise too. My first ABN spawn was only about 50 eggs, and within 2 months I was getting over 200 eggs per spawn.

I see your photos of eggs on the CSG page. Again, congratulations! Good luck with the eggs. Myself, I've had mediocre success hatching eggs coated with any substrate (sand in my case), but really excellent hatching with clean eggs stuck to leaves and tank decorations. Please let us know your hatchin...

it looks perfectly normal. I assume you mean "normal" in the sense that it's not bleeding and it doesn't have little dangling flanges of tissue; isn't the reason you posted in the first place that its fin isn't "normal" shape, as in typical for a Hypancistrus or most other plecos?

Interesting. Do you think it's simply a developmental defect? Perhaps the fin was damaged when the fish was young in such a way that it is incapable of normal regeneration (since a lot of soft ray and fin damage does tend to heal over time, from what I've seen).

Is the fin torn? It looks torn to me, almost like a bite was taken out of it (although I'm not saying it's a bite mark - that would have to be a dang big mouth on a really dang big fish! LOL).

Cheers, Eric

Thanks for the info, Mol_PMB. I can easily envision the example of how filling in crevices between big gravel with fine sand will lead to poor circulation; so that's not a problem for me. I think my struggle is with imagining that a uniform fine sand still provides good water and gas flow (when comp...

With my P. maccus eggs, the bad eggs disintegrated within a day after I found them. I would imagine that if you have bad eggs or unfertilized eggs, they will be evident very quickly.

ilnitMs1LRk Hi TTA, When you want to embed a YouTube video into a forum post using the [youtube] tags, you don't need to paste the entire URL of the video between the tags (in this case, the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilnitMs1LRk link). All you need to put inside the tags is the actual unique ...

Thanks for the link, Teresa. My favorite part of that essay is the part where the author compares the home-made caves to looking like "something you just pooped out." LOL I did like the author's emphasis on the benefits of overhanging ledges above the caves. Several of these most recent ca...

There's nothing to stop a person from blending some sand and some gravel together. That won't hurt anything and it can create some interesting textures on the aquarium floor (and sometimes it looks more natural than sand alone), but it won't fix the problems described above. In fact, I suspect that ...

As mentioned above, personally, I'm not a fan of gravel* for my south American fish at all, except very fine gravel (almost sand, but coarse enough that it's not prone to float in the water when stirred up by fish). Otherwise, I'm convinced that sand is the way to go. * To clarify, I realize that th...

Hi zurikitty13, ... now I'm worried there are dangerous toxic air bubbles or something? I remember reading something like that somewhere. Any suggestions for how I can fix this mess? As of now, everything seems okay, but I would like to safely take out the blue gravel without disturbing the budding ...

Thanks, the eggs i guess were laid Saturday or Sunday, but they could belong to the second male, ... But then i can't be sure who's the dad. Lol. =)) In that case, it might be a good idea to go back and get your second male back. Not a good idea to get rid of a male if he might be the breeder. More...

Oh my goodness!!! :YMPARTY: :YMPARTY: Im a pleco mum!!!! ... some are bad but some are good in the centre of the clump they are in... any tips on how i separate the bad ones from the good. Congratulations! What's the old tradition, cigars for everyone? (maybe just algae wafers will suffice, but I d...