Sexing Panaqolus maccus? Spawning at last!

[bekateen]

Hi All,

I've got 3 clown plecos (

Panaqolus maccus

) and I'd like to know if I have both males and females. I believe the largest, which I've had for about 2 years, is a female because it is very round-bodied and doesn't have heavy odontodes; but my other two are younger and probably not sexually mature. I've read on PC that adult males develop the odontodes on their back and opercula. Is this evident only after sexual maturity, or would sub-adult males also have the odontodes?

Also, do clown plecos have sexually dimorphic genital papillae? When I purchased my two smaller fish, one had a prominent papilla and the other didn't, so I was hoping that this was assurance that I had at least one of each sex.

Thanks, Eric

EDIT: I changed the title of this thread (originally "Sexing Panaqolus maccus?") to reflect the eventual successful spawning by my clowns, described at the bottom of this page.

[magdalo]

You need to post some pictures for us to help you. Catch them, place them in a basin then photograph them from the top.

[bekateen]

I think I have one male and two females

[pleco_breeder]

I would be more apt to say 2 male and female. The top fish appears to be female, middle definitely male, bottom appears male but not certain.

Larry

[bekateen]

I had read elsewhere that females have a narrow triangular about and males have a wider head. Is this not true? The top two fish have very triangular snouts. And the top one I know has smooth skin. The bottom fish has a wider, rounder head and a spiky body (odontodes?).

[magdalo]

I agree, one female and two males. Head shape alone is not enough. Body shape (girth) and odontal growth should also be considered.

[bekateen]

Just so you know, I've owned the top, big female almost two years longer than the two smaller fish, so I think the two smaller fish are much younger, if that matters.

[pleco_breeder]

Age isn't really a concern here. Head shape is more relative to the body than whether it's narrow or pointed. Although it can be useful, mature/well conditioned fish are a necessity for any educated guess. The same can be said for vent comparisons. Having said that, odontode growth is substantially more accurate in these fish. Looking at the pics at full size, male odontodes appear to be obvious on the caudal peduncle of both the bottom fish. The last pic doesn't show them quite as clearly, and is the reason I said I wasn't certain of the sex. Given that you mention the odontodes of the bottom fish, I would say it's two males and one female with much more certainty.

Larry

[bekateen]

Okay, great. Thanks, everyone, for your input. The answer is not what I expected, but that's okay. I going to be moving these fish from the large community tank and setting up a species tank just for them. Let's see how that goes.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

As a follow-up to this post (Re: Will clown plecos eat shrimp? Is raw or cooked better?) in another thread, here are updated photos and sizes of my clown plecos (fish numbers correlate between SL values and photos): (For your information, the graph paper gridlines visible in the dorsal views are 0.1 inches apart)

1. 52 mm, obvious odontodes, body not very wide, small genital papilla (obvious male)
2. 57 mm, small odontodes, large genital papilla, really wide body (obvious female)
3. 55 mm, medium odontodes, body not very wide, large genital papilla (probably male; maybe female)
4. 57 mm, small odontodes, large genital papilla, really wide body (obvious female)

EDIT: After many posts leading to the bottom of page 3 and the top of page 4 of this thread, it turned out that fish #3 is female - perhaps not in as good condition as fishes #2 and #4, but still a female.

[bekateen]

Fish #2 Female

[bekateen]

Fish #3 Male? By the way, the snout of this fish, at the time of photography, was depigmented and almost cream-colored (this is slightly visible in the dorsal view photo). I don't know if this was a temporary color change due to stress, or if the fish looks like this all the time (since its head is usually hidden inside a cave).
EDIT: After many posts leading to the bottom of page 3 and the top of page 4 of this thread, it turned out that fish #3 is female - perhaps not in as good condition as fishes #2 and #4, but still a female.

[bekateen]

Fish #4 Female

[bekateen]

Okay kids, our newlyweds may be in the middle of consummating their relationship, inaugurating their bamboo tube, doing what they should do so well. I came home today and observed this occurring at about 6 pm, while lights were still on:

https://youtu.be/0Cm4wauHJBk

https://youtu.be/enojLYEgTW4

.

I'm hoping this is trapping and spawning behavior, not merely two clowns fighting over a cave. Can anybody validate this? Fingers crossed, I'm going to sleep tonight like an eager little boy on Christmas eve, waiting to wake up on Christmas morning, wondering what Santa (i.e., mom and dad pleco) left under the tree... er, in the bamboo... for me. LOL

Cheers, Eric

P.S. The second video goes dark just before the end, and yet you can still hear the sound, because by coincidence, the timer on my aquarium hood lamp switched the light off at that moment. I was very fortunate to be able to get the video just before lights out.

[panaque]

Doesn't look like fighting to me. Let us know what you find in the morning.

[bekateen]

Of course, the cave is deep, dark, and blocked by a clown, so it's difficult to see everything inside. But from what I can see with a flashlight, there are no eggs yet, and currently there's only one clown inside, not two. . But I shouldn't get discouraged, as I read that spawning can take several days... Hopefully soon.

[Borbi]

..and the best way for you to "help" is to not bother them (yes, I know that's extremely hard!).
If you can, ignore the tank for two, better three days..

[Birger]

hehe yes, get busy doing other things or go on holidays...that seems to often help.

Birger

[bekateen]

...go on holidays...that seems to often help.

Isn't that @Shane's technique? viewtopic.php?f=5&t=41631

If it's good enough for Shane, it's good enough for me.

Alas, no holiday in the near future for me. So I'll just have to keep busy with other things.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Yippee!!!! For the last few days, I've had the clown pleco tank front covered half-way with thick black paper for additional privacy (the back and both sides were already covered in the past with the same paper). Today I peeked under the paper to look in the bamboo spawning tubes. First I checked the bamboo tube which was featured in the videos shown above. That tube still has a male and female inside, but I didn't see any eggs. Then I looked into the other tubes, and in one tube I found a clown with 4 eggs visible.

Hooray!!!! ( ... can you tell I'm excited and happy? )

My main concern now is that these eggs are behind the father, rather than in front of him. I suspect he's neglected or rejected these and they're about to be kicked out of the tube. I suppose if they are, I'll have to siphon them out and put them in an egg tumbler.

Given that these eggs are in a different tube from the couple of clowns I found before, I'm hoping I might get more than one spawn at the same time. Joy of joys!

Wish us (the clowns and me) luck!

[bekateen]

As I suspected, five eggs were expelled from the male's cave last night. I siphoned four of them up and placed them in an egg tumbler inside the parents' tank (the fifth egg is moving around in the aquarium somewhere; I didn't want to disturb the tank more than necessary searching for it, so I left it in the aquarium; hopefully it doesn't get eaten by the

C141

corys). Here is a brief video of the eggs:

https://youtu.be/4pXCLUb0Nz0

One thing I noticed about the eggs from last night to this morning: Last night, the eggs had a lot of semi-transparent yolk in them, with a small blob of more pale and opaque material in the egg, somewhat submerged within the yolk (this is visible in the video). This morning when I observed the eggs in the tumbler, they were almost completely colorless (the yellow was almost entirely gone), and the small opaque blob now looked more whitish. I hope this doesn't mean the eggs are bad.

By the way, I'm amazed at how large these eggs are, relative to the size of the clown plecos! I imagine it's not very comfortable pushing those eggs out! LOL

Cheers, Eric

[racoll]

By the way, I'm amazed at how large these eggs are, relative to the size of the clown plecos! I imagine it's not very comfortable pushing those eggs out!

I think they take on a fair bit of water after they have been expelled and fertilised.

[bekateen]

I think they take on a fair bit of water after they have been expelled and fertilised.

I know that's true for the outer jelly coat. But does that occur to the actual yolky cell too? I don't know about fish, but AFAIK, that's not a big factor in frogs.

Cheers, Eric

[jac]

Congratulations
Following egg development is always interesting ;) The white blob you're seeing is the embryo forming on the yolk. It will get a tail soon and start wagging inside the egg

[bekateen]

Thanks, jac. I hope you're right about the embryo forming.

I do worry that the reason this male wasn't guarding these eggs was because they weren't fertilized or they were bad. Time will tell. And if these eggs do fail, I have plenty of reasons to keep a stiff upper lip and remain hopeful:

1. There is another couple of clowns still trapping in a second cave,
2. The knowledge that in my experience, once a fish spawns the first time, they usually do it again soon, and finally
3. The experience that several of my fish usually make bad fathers the first time they mate (my albino BN male took 4 spawns before he finally kept an entire clutch of eggs safe until hatching).

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Dang. Woke up this morning and there are no signs of eggs or fry in the tumbler. Last night, the eggs had no mold on them, so that wasn't the problem; but there were also no visible embryos inside (just the opaque areas I mentioned before). The eggs seem to have disintegrated overnight. Perhaps they weren't properly fertilized.

[bekateen]

For future readers, here are links to other threads of mine where I was asking questions about clown plecos in order to get help with this breeding project:

• Will clown plecos eat shrimp? Is raw or cooked better?
• Frozen vegetables for clown plecos?
• Do P. maccus pectoral rays turn red?

Here are some links to older threads with photographs that also addressed sexing clown plecos:

• My clown pleco doesn't look right (but as the title of this thread suggested, the OP may not have realized that the issue was sexing)
• help me sexing this L164 (note: the OP mistyped their title; within the thread they wrote L104, not L164)
• l104 breeding size/age/sexing ????
• Sexing Dwarf Clown Plec's

Here are some more old threads about setting up L104 tanks, breeding projects, and fry feeding:

• Re: L104-what to do to suit them (details in thread)
• P. Maccus - Clown Pleco Breeding
• L104 1st spawn
• Panaque maccus spawn

One of the problems I experienced trying to find these threads, and why I found some of them AFTER spawning my own clowns rather than before when I was asking "how to" questions, is that I searched the forums for "Panaqolus maccus" and "clown pleco." Yes I knew that these used to be called Panaque maccus, but I just didn't have that name in the forefront of my mind, so I didn't search for it. And I don't tend to use L numbers for species which have scientific names, so in the beginning of this thread, I didn't run searches for L104... Live and learn.

[bekateen]

A second spawn! (It took longer for these guys to get around to it than I expected). This time the dad has the eggs placed deep at the end of the cave and he's guarding them carefully. So I'm going to let him brood them naturally, and hopefully we have some little fry running around!

Here's a mystery for the ages (maybe, probably not): There are four bamboo and two PVC pipe caves in this tank. Just yesterday and the day before, I had two males each trapping females in bamboo caves. Neither of those males ended up with eggs. The eggs laid today are in a third cave, which up until today was occupied by a lonely male. I can't ID the individual males, so I don't know whether or not any cave swapping occurred between males, but I strongly doubt that occurred; it's been my observation that once a male gets in a cave he defends that cave. Go figure.

[Jobro]

Hello Eric,

Congrats on your spawning. Hope I will see that happening in my tank as well someday.
I do have 4 of those fish, too. Bought 2 juveniles some time ago which seem to be females now, at least no odontodes yet. And later I bought another 2 which were still too small to be sexed and I am hoping for at least 1 male. Maybe I will get them out of their caves later today and check for odontodes

U didn't post any updates on the first spawn. I suppose there were more than those few eggs that u put in the egg tumbler, right? what happened to them? Still in the cave with dad or all gone?

Cheers, Johannes.

[bekateen]

Thanks, Johannes. My last update from my first spawn was on 11 June, here: http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 20#p287203. There were no eggs remaining with the father in the cave. I never saw more than 5 eggs the first time. In this new spawn, I can't see the egg mass fully, since dad is guarding it. I know two eggs were ejected, and I'm estimating 5-10 eggs remain in the tube under dad's care. They should hatch today or tomorrow.

Truth be told, the week before my first spawn, I added three more clowns, two males 40 mm SL each with odontodes, and one female (45 mm SL). These fish were much smaller than my original fish (up to 57 mm SL), but still showed signs of sexual development. I'm thinking the addition mixed up the original social group and triggered that spawn (total 7 fish, 4 males and 3 females).

Good luck to you with your clowns. If you haven't yet read my other threads on clowns (Will clown plecos eat shrimp? Is raw or cooked better?, Frozen vegetables for clown plecos?, and Do P. maccus pectoral rays turn red?), please do. I received a lot of good advice from Shane and others that helped me get to where I am now.

Cheers, Eric

P.S. Here is a short video of dad guarding his eggs: https://youtu.be/oQ8XqibhoSg