Any interest in a documenting of my summer breeding related project

[TwoTankAmin]

I must apologize for having stopped posting in this thread, but two days after the above post I had a heart attack and 5 days later I had bypass surgery. I am just now getting back close to normal. I do have a few observations about what went on in my tanks over the past 11 weeks or so.

The first two issues I worried about were feeding and water changes. My brother was able to feed but I had him using flakes and kensfish.com mini sinking sticks. I was able to give him numbers on the sticks and a decent description on flake amounts. Only tanks with fry got fed daily, the rest got fed every 3 days to minimize the work. A couple of nice folks in my fish club, one a friend and the other almost a stranger, came and helped out a couple of times each. So the tanks got water changes and filter rinsing every 3 weeks and the fish in the terrace tabks got brought inside. I am now doing the maint. work, but it takes more time than usual.

Now for the interesting part. I figured that the reduced maint. and the use of lower quality food fed less often would have a negative impact on spawning and the survival of the very young fry in tanks. I was half wrong. Even as I was losing the smallest fry, my breeders were still spawning. For the first week+ home I did nothing tank/fishwise save feed the same fway as I had my brother doing. That was when I discovered new fry in the TR 173 tank and both L236 tanks. About three weeks ago I spotted new fry in the WC 173 tank and over the weekend the alpha male released his most recent brood from his cave. I cannot say if there have been spawns in some of other tanks. I was not allowed to bend over for a few weeks which made it impossible to do a real inspection of any of my six under tanks which are for breeding or growing out plecos.

I am just about back to where I can start breaking down and putting tanks back together to determine what I still have. When I went into the hospital I had almost 200 assorted pleco fry with a number being one month or less free swimming.

[bekateen]

Yikes! Regardless of the delay, I'm grateful you're still here. Happy Thanksgiving

[TwoTankAmin]

Under the heading of better later than never. Here are pics of some of offspring from my second group of L236. 13 went into a terrace grow tank and then the reverse trio and their 14 assorted fry went into another. These pics are of the 13.

[bekateen]

They are beautiful, TTA. You are a wizard.

Cheers, Eric

[TwoTankAmin]

TY @bekateen

But the truth is I have amazing well water and I try to feed my fish well and give them a decent set-up. The rest I chalk up to good luck and great advice along the way.

Got through the RB 236 breeder tank yesterday/ I removed 11 fry to the grow space giving me a total of 24. I redid the breeder tank adding a thin layer of sand to it. Since it has a matten filter, I added a clear plastic corner bead to the bottom to prevent the sand from getting pulled in. Sorry, but I shot no pictures. What I do have on my PC are the pics I shot of the second group of 173 and their offspring. I will get them posted in the next few days.

In another half hour or so I am going to see what is up in the 173b breeder tank. These fish are on the short list to go out. I am finally beginning my downsizing project. This will leave me just the WC 173 breeder tank to do this weekend.

[TwoTankAmin]

The final WC 173 count is in- 36 fry in the breeder tank. They are 1/2 to 1+ inch. I had about 30 in there before I went out of service for a couple of months. Since about 2/3 of the above babies were about 1/2 inch, they had to have been born pretty recently. This means I had to have lost a bunch from the original count but gained back enough to more than replace them. I had left the smallest babies in the breeder tank when I did the original count and rehoming this past summer. The total number of offspring of all sizes now is 126 plus the 6 larger (2 inch avg.) I kept for myself to watch grow into adults.

[TwoTankAmin]

Once again I am under the heading of better later than never. Here are the pics of the 11 tank raised breeder group of L173 and their offspring at the time. Since I took these pics I have had several more spawns from this group. Almost any time I go into the room where this tank is, I see a number of smaller fry out. If it is feeding time and I drop in food, I see more. I have been able to count at least 10 on several occasions. As a wise mentor once taught me. "If you see a few fry, you can bet there are a bunch more out of sight."

Breeders

Kids

(see post below for one more Kids pic.

On another note, if you have a crazy amount of money burning a hole in your pocket, you win the lottery or come into a bunch of cash, this breeding group will be for sale in the not too distant future. I am in my pre-planned process of getting down to but a single tank over the next several years. The goal is to have only my big tank and clown loaches as my final tank and for this to happen by the end of 2023

[TwoTankAmin]

Kids second pic.

[sedimentaryBear]

Thank you @TwoTankAmin for posting this thread! As a novice cat keeper, it is really amazing to see how veterans in the hobby set up their systems and breed various species.

Also, I hope your recovery is going smoothly and that you are still having fun with your plecos!

Best,
Ben