Peckoltia lineola breeding project - spawned, but...

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Dang! Day 5 of incubation. I arrive at work to find one egg precariously dangling on the rim of dad's cave. Worse yet, I can see dad still has a pile of eggs in front of him, but I also see he's got a lot of empty egg cases. Has he been eating or breaking eggs?

Five hours later, I discover dad kicked half of the remaining eggs out of the cave. So I setup a fry basket, retrieve the loose eggs (two of which have hatched, prematurely I suspect) and I dump the remaining eggs out of dad's cave. Including the premie hatchlings, I recovered 19 eggs and about again as many empty egg cases.

Why are these fish so challenged when it comes to spawning?!?

Hopefully the remaining eggs survive.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

From the 19 eggs, about 8-10 eggs hatched in total (including the two premies). Of those hatched, 5 wigglers were alive on 22-Oct, and by yesterday (24 Oct), I saw only 4 wigglers alive and okay. There are others that look dead or nearly so.

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Update on Peckoltia lineola fry. I have five total fry, now about 1.5 weeks post hatching. Three look normal, but oddly two have missing/deformed tails. I suspect the tail problem is related to time of hatching (you may recall some hatched days early) or due to trauma as eggs were kicked out of caves (or did dad eject bad eggs?). Anyway, here are pictures of two normal fry and one deformed fry.

Hopefully the next spawn yields better results.

Cheers, Eric

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Video update of the Peckoltia lineola fry. The healthy fry look nothing like what I expected based on their color pattern.

Cheers, Eric

Peckoltia lineola fry 16 days old

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Three weeks old, 21 mm SL. I've got three fry in this healthy condition and two which have deformities: one has a deformed tail and stubby caudal peduncle, and the other has a stubby peduncle but no tail. Still, it's nice to have gotten any at all.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Peckoltia lineola fry are now almost 6 weeks old. The three healthy fry are growing well, but the tailless fry (visible on the leaf, bottom center, to left of rock) has not grown (but at least it's still alive).

An interesting color pattern has emerged on the heads of the healthy fry. It's a 5-point fork projecting backwards from the eyes to the dorsal spine, with the "tines" of the fork converging as they extend posteriorly. In front of the eyes, across the base of the fork there are more diverging lines extending forward down onto the snout, face and cheeks below the eyes.

These fish are colored unlike any plecos I've spawned before. It's fascinating to watch their colors develop.

Parents are trapping again. It would be nice to get more eggs to work with.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Update: Both females are being trapped right now, for a few days. Hopefully another spawn will come off that.. two would be awesome.

Fry from the last spawn are now about 7 weeks old and 27-28mm SL. One of the healthy fry got out of the basket, following the escape of the fry with the deformed tail.

Here are the two healthy fry still in the basket. I didn't photograph the tailless fry in the basket yesterday.

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The five- prong fork is developing. The central mark down the snout is becoming two parallel lines. That split was emerging on younger fry, but those are relatively faint lines and a little broken so it was harder to see in younger fish. Also, the line that crosses through the eyes splits into an upside down Y below each eye. Finally, the area between the eyes is turning into a dark blotch. That was also evident in younger fish, but was more ambiguous then.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

On a confirmational point, there was concern when I first got my fish that the adults might be L205, since their faces were so spotted. The adults' identity as P. lineola was confirmed by Daniel Konn-Vetterlein and Nathan Lujan.

Now looking at my fry, nearly 2 months old, and comparing them to the 2-month old L205 juvies pictured in the CLOG (https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/im ... ge_id=8765) confirms that my fish are not L205. The head coloration couldn't be more different between the two species at this age.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Nearly 3 months old, now the largest is at least 35mm SL. Water turbulence makes measuring difficult.

Parents trapping on and off for weeks, but no spawns since late October.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

My official 3 months, now 36mm SL photos. Dang, for being so small, they have pretty good pectoral odontodes already.