Pairing of platydoras armulatus in effect. Any tips?

[knifegill]

I have been collecting armulatus and of the three that are currently together, two appear to be exhibiting behaviors discussed in the few other recorded cases of armulatus spawning or almost spawning. The narrower one, which I had suspected to be male, is biting the fins of the whiter, fatter one which now certainly seems female (wishful fantasy is probably playing a big part, I'm sure). She has taken to an upside-down clay pot that has a door cut into it. He chases her back into it now and then. I really want this to happen.
Should I do the usual blackwater summer simulation? I'm not going to take it below 6.3, as it is too easy to lose control of water conditions below there. I'm thinking maple leaves and driftwood. I know lots of live food is in order. That's easy with my snail farm, pill bugs and earthworms. Any big don'ts? Should I try to move them out of the oscar's tank? The only other tank I could use would be the 30g that I use as a quarantine. Right now it has a 9" Orinocodoras Eigenmanni. But I could shorten his quarantine time (the source had no record of illness in his tank) and make the switch soon. Gosh, I'd hate to freak them out by moving them. Perhaps I should wait for fry and try moving the fry instead?

Any input is MUCH appreciated.

[Bas Pels]

If possible, I would move the oscars. To the fridge, if all else fails

Seriously, what you are attempting is something quite a few people, I'm one of them, are dreaming of, and it would be horrible if eventual fry would be eaten

[knifegill]

[dignified british accent] I'll have you know my Oscar is no pet shop inbred thing! He is either F0 or F1 wild Peru Oscar, replete with extra ocelli and reduced tolerance for poor water quality. Nothing short of a. ocellatus splendor. [/dignified british accent]

Really, though, I'm somewhat set on watching for eggs and acting if/when I see them. I've added a few minutes to their light timer and will continue to do so until it equals 12 hours. I will also bump the temps a bit, though it's really quite the ordeal with three heaters to synchronize. And I think I'll prepare a little blackwater in a small, aerated container and add it as an additive rather than muck up the tank with debris. It's a barebottom tank as part of the war I wage against nitrates.

[wrasse]

(Hillbilly from Hicksville accent ) Take that there cottonpickin cockadoody oscar and pud it in tha creek! Ooops sorry, couldn't resist... (partner is from Ohio and has to put up with a lot worse! )
Apart from moving the oscar i wouldn't change anything, as they are already showing the behaviour you've described in the existing conditions. Give them the livefood and be patient.
If at some point you think it better to move the catfish, rather than using a net try herding them into a plastic container and then transfer.

[apistomaster]

I think your best conditioning food would be live earthworms, as much as they can eat.
I suspect these catfish appreciate having a much messier tank than you.
As a minimum, I would provide a lot of Oak leaf litter over a thin layer of sand. Provide them a lot of three dimensional structures like a lot of wood with some areas pretty congested. I would offer them a variety of caves. Some larger versions of the rectangular caves made of stone finished ceramic floor tiles like many use for breeding plecos might be good idea.
I would not count much on simulating black water. If you use a lot of Oak leaf litter you would be helping to approximate that well enough.
I would use a lot of RO water and not worry about how low the pH drops. If you keep up with making enough water changes using mainly RO water that is going to more closely approximate their natural conditions and the pH may fall as low as 5.0 but that is nothing to worry about as long as the pH is kept fairly steady. I am not sure why you set a target pH value at 6.3.
If it is because you think a lower pH would compromise your biological filtration it won't.
Conditioning the breeders for months on earthworms and making smaller water changes followed by a sudden increase in both size and frequency of large RO water changes would hopefully simulate the onset of the rainy season(presumably when they normally spawn). Dry season regime might be simulated by weekly 25% water changes for a couple months(benign neglect) followed up by 50% RO water changes daily for 2 or 3 weeks to simulate the rainy season conditions. The fresh water ought to be cool enough to drop the tank's temperature 8-10*F and then allow your heaters to bring the temperatures back up to ~82*F

You did not describe the size of the tank you are keeping them in. I think I would want to use at least a standard 75 gallon tank unless you build your own and made one which has about the same surface area of 48 X 18 inches and made it 16 to 18 inches high instead of 20 inches.
Why do you use 3 heaters? I know why some feel more comfortable with using two although I only use one.
I don't have a grudge against your Oscar but I would consider it to be a nuisance to any serious breeding attempt since it will eat many of the earthworms before the catfish can get to them. I never understand any breeding attempt which doesn't focus 100% on the needs and habits of the fish one is trying to breed and that always means dedicating the proposed breeding tank to only the fish you are attempting to breed.

[knifegill]

Funny, ohio accent guy.

Earthworms sound great. I have several clean collection sites I frequent, and I feed the raphaels with a tube so Oscar is not able to get their food. The catfish actually put their mouth slightly inside the opening of the tube and suck to pump the food down faster, so it is rare that a piece of food drifts away.

While a little litter might be great, the thought of little bits of this and that caught throughout it, rotting, and raising my nitrates is not an acceptable mode of fishkeeping for me. The idea that the catfish would appreciate it and it might perhaps egg on the breeding process is not a very solid one in my mind. If weeks and weeks go by without eggs laid, I will likely submit and buy/obtain sand and some sticks and leaves, etc. Otherwise, I'm rolling with the idea that spawning is triggered more strongly by lengthening days, dropping pH, and temperature swings than by decor. Since they are either surface or cave spawners depending on which profile you read, there is a good chance that the floor of the tank is not as crucial as the other factors. But I'll certainly keep that thought armed and ready.

They do have a good maze of caves via several pots, a massive chunk of driftwood, slate leaned up against the blacked-out end of the tank, and some anchored java moss that the male has cleared a spot under. It is from this location he watches the female and keeps her attentions.

I am afraid of the dropping pH because in my early days I had many fish fall ill in spite of a healthy nitrogen cycle and adequate feeding. Then I discovered my tap water has no hardness. At all. It is artificially buffered with gas, and as soon as it begins circulating, it plummets too low to test. It is only with the aid of crushed coral gravel that I now have fish five years old and counting. So to maintain a pH that low, I'd be holding massive amounts of water somewhere and aerating it. I have no such location, or the heaters for it. I am, sadly, not a wealthy person.

I do like the water quality swing plan. Sounds like a good simulation technique. I will refer to your post frequently in the near future, I'm sure.

The tank is 125g. Lightly stocked to keep my nitrates below 10. Never any ammonia or nitrite. pH is currently hovering between 6.6 and 6.8. Three heaters are there because this is an upgrade from a 75g, and neither of the two I had in there were rated correctly to go with the third one I already had. Again with the poverty. In went three heaters. Then the non ebo-jager broke so I convinced my wife to let me get a 250 watt eheim-jager to replace it, and she let me. Hooray.

I confirm your suspicions that this breeding attempt is not 100% pure, but came about as I gathered raphael cats locally and began dreaming. I am obviously a huge raphael catfish fan, but my Oscar is also quite the prize to the rest of my family and myself. I did clear out the four baby sunfish, and the stock is just the O, one L200 pleco, and the three armulatus. Although, with the 9" orinocodoras eigenmanni coming upstairs soon, that might change. If I could find a heater for my 75 gal tank, I would move the pair of raphs down there right now. Then I could focus 100% and not freak out about nitrates since the Oscar would be out of the picture.

[wrasse]

I admire your attitude to fish-keeping and I reckon many people would envy your water supply... its so much easier to manipulate than if it was rock-hard and alkaline.
Your cats are obviously well-conditioned now, so keep them like that and buy the extra heater when you can so they can have a tank to themselves. Meantime, step-up the live food and all the other spawning triggers you can currently do and just keep pushing towards your goal.

[Bas Pels]

[accent=Dutch] sorry for insulting your Oscars. I just intended to point out the combination oscar - opportunistic feeder - with a breeding catfish would not combine well [/accent]

[knifegill]

Heh. You're not off on that. Most Oscars are inbred trash. Crooked mouths, increased susceptibility to disease, abused because of their large size and fed horrid things all contribute to the general downfall of the Oscar's reputation. I have corrected this in my own home, but that doesn't carry very far after all.

Update: Fed them LOTS of mealworms today, and momma was especially keen on keeping her mouth in the tube, which suggests increased metabolic needs (perhaps, to form eggs? I hope.). I have realized that the only thing keeping me from moving them is the lack of a heater. I'm keeping my eye out for cheap heaters. Cross your fingers for me.

[Suckermouth]

Update: Fed them LOTS of mealworms today, and momma was especially keen on keeping her mouth in the tube, which suggests increased metabolic needs (perhaps, to form eggs? I hope.). I have realized that the only thing keeping me from moving them is the lack of a heater. I'm keeping my eye out for cheap heaters. Cross your fingers for me.

AFAIK, in the vast majority of fish, females do not court until they are already gravid.

[knifegill]

But a gravid fish will have expended energy to become gravid, so nutrition would be sought more strongly.

[wrasse]

Getting the female ripe with eggs is perhaps the first hurdle. Getting the male into condition is another. I reckon you can do these now, with the oscar in the tank.
If you move the cats, using a net could set things back for weeks and possibly damage a very ripe female. Good luck

[apistomaster]

I think if these fish spawn during the rainy season as so many Neotropical fish do, their biology is timed to have their eggs ripen when food is most abundant so they eat better with less effort which helps them have more of their energies available to be invested into their egg production just in time for their breeding season. That is assuming these catfish only breed once a year which I only suspect but do not know for certain. That is when there is more breeding habitat available and when there is the greatest abundance of small food organisms available for the young of the year, too.
I wonder if the males normally guard both the nest and young free swimming fry for a couple weeks like the North American Bullhead catfish do?

[knifegill]

When I set up their 75 gal, I will introduce a host of pond life like daphnia, euglena, gammarus scuds and two species of prolific snails which I currently maintain in captivity for such occasions. I have many tricks up my sleeve and I will take notes the whole time to see what might trigger them.

Egg development, I suspect, is still underway. She does not yet appear to have 'swallowed a golf ball' as some might put it.

[knifegill]

Mostly useless update:

The pair still appear to be engaged in courtship. I fear that without a heater I am forced to add the eigenmanni to the group and hope he doesn't upset them. He's been in that 30g for quarantine long enough! It was my hope to remove the pair at the time I introduced the eigenmanni to avoid all confrontation, but unless I can convince them that a 30 gallon tank is a great place to have babies, that's not happening.

I have also recently acquired another young "female" armulatus (now in a 20g quarantine) who I will keep in the thirty gallon (after bringing the eigenmanni upstairs) and feed much until she is big enough for the group.

So the juggling ensues. Wish me a heater.

[knifegill]

Update to keep any later readers informed as to what I've done. I made maple-leaf blackwater in a modified brita pitcher with a small fountain pump, hose, sponge, etc. After a 50% water change this friday in the main tank with same-temp dechlorinated tap water, I added the blackwater which was, by then, the color of weak coffee. Within minutes of adding the 'blackwater', every fish in the tank got spunky. The Oscar was doing his usual 'bite the ground' routine against the glass, but with more vigor than normal. The fins on my L200 went up. The raphaels did a lot of moving around, too. I hope it sparked something good.

I bought a heater. I have no personal spending left, but I realized that that's what personal spending is for! So I'll be setting up the 75gal pretty soon, here. I've got to design a somewhat strong filter that won't kill daphnia and euglena. I'm thinking of making a box of mesh and drawing water through the walls with a powerhead before sending it through some lava-rock for bio. I don't think I'll need too much with only 11" of catfish in 75gal with plants and green water (if it stays green).

Fed them more rolly pollies and Cichlid Attack tonight. The 'mama' is really keen on sucking her food out of the tube. The 'male' doesn't really get involved, preferring to scour for bits and pieces.

[knifegill]

Got their tank up. I'm logging most of my details on MFK, but I have any success I'll write a little article for you guys.
Here's the pair in their tank now:

Any word on what HASN'T worked?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KXnSday_Cs

[knifegill]

Thinking of replacing the black-bellied "female" with the white-bellied "female" in my main tank.

The pair are happy and eating, but it seems that courtship is either confined to nocturnal hours or isn't happening anymore. I'll try a big water change soon and report.

[knifegill]

I've switched the females around. They seem happy enough. I guess time will tell.

Guess what? Somebody in Asia is pond-rearing the buggers. I saw batches of fry at Petco and Petsmart and worked my way up the chain over the phone. The highest I got was a buyer who has visited the ponds. He says they are using no hormones, and that the ponds are very muddy, 50' by 20' and around 4' to 5' deep. He didn't know what species of plants were in there - or wouldn't tell me. It's not like I have anything to gain. I just want an army of catfish.

[apistomaster]

I did not know any commercial production as going on but remember I mentioned considering using a deep bottom layer of peat moss.
I don't think these fish are cave spawners. I think they spawn much like

Ameiurus nebulosus

. View species profile page.

I bred Kuhlii Loaches over 40 years ago using a deep peat moss bed and a lot of Tubifex when H.R. Axelrod was publishing photos purportedly showing the breeding in surface bubble nests and their eggs were said to be green. I think some one ate too much green eggs and ham when they decided to publish junk info like that in TFH Publications.

[knifegill]

UPDATE:
Found an antiquated liosomadoras morrowi in Chinatown and couldn't resist. When I got home I had to juggle some fish to get him isolated for quarantine, and the pair are now back in the 125g with their own kind. The hoplo cats now reside in the 75g and seem to be very happy with the arrangement, and the new false jaguar in in the hoplos' old home. So project off the burner for now. This isn't giving up, but a sidetrack. Sometime in the next year I'll try a different approach: Condition each sex in its own tank and when they are fattened up / colored up, put them together into a new cycled tank, or put the female into the male's tank. That's later, though. Thanks for all the input, and this thread will be a reference point when I try again.

[Bimmerboy12]

Good luck! I hope all works out and you get some fry!