PlanetCatfish.com

Hi all

I'm interested in hearing the responses and opinions of those who have been long time keepers of plecos, zebra pl*cs in particular.

I'm getting ready to purchase a 40 gallon used system which will hopefully one day house a zebra colony. My question to you is what would be your ideal dream set up? I'd love to hear your opinions on all.....substrate, filters, particular cave makers and number of caves, decor (fake or live plants), how much rock and bogwood to use, good number of zebras for a 40 gallon, lighting and possible tankmates. This could be either smaller fish or perhaps one pair of cool rare fish (I love the rare and unusual) that would enjoy a stonger current and live peacefully with the zebras.

The sky's the limit here since it's just my dream tank. The only thing to keep in mind is that it will be a 40 gallon tank for starters. If grow out tanks need to be purchased in the future, so be it. But for now, I will just be getting the 40.

Can't wait to hear your responses!

Well I'm not really a "long term" owner, but I have had the fortune of getting four of them a while back, before christmas.I think in october.
My ideal set up would be to have a small breeding colony of 10-15 of them in a long, high flow tank. maybe 40-50 gallons. I'd probly have enough "hiding" spaces so there'd be a few extra, maybe 20 in total so no one is left out in the open. Use lots of marponi wood for decoration and helping acidify the water.
I'd add a few very small fish, something very passive. I was thinking about an apisto. cacato. but they might be a little rambuncious when they spawn. Maybe some blue eye rainbows. They stay small and are pretty "dither" fish.
As far as substrate, something dark and round as not to hurt their little bellies. Maybe epoxy coated?
Right now my dream would be to get some more of them to begin with. One source seems to feel they'll be available again aroun june to october. Lets hope this is true.
Also another dream would be getting them cheap, not 2-3 hundred dollars as that's the going price on them right now.

A 40 gallon is plenty big enough for a small group of Zebra's. There are a couple of articles about breeding them in Shane's world.

If you have plenty of money, you could go for Gulex suggestion and get more than 10, but I would think that a sufficient colony for reproduction would be about 5. You want to have at least two males, and at the very least one female, but having surplus females gives you two things: Higher chances of a female being able to spawn when the male is ready, and the possibility of higher frequency of spawns if the second female is able to spawn whilst the other is still getting into condition from a previous spawn.

That's to the best of my knowledge.

As to substrate: You don't need substrate for these fish, but if you do want it for your own pleasure ("Because it looks nice"), then use some sort of gravel that is rounded, as in natural river/beach gravel or some such. I wouldn't personally buy anything that is artificially rounded, but I'm sure the fish don't really care if it's smooth because it's got an epoxy coating or because it's been at the rolled around under water for a few million years...

The choice of "complimentary fish" is based on temperature and tolerance to current, so as Gulex suggests: small specie of Rainbow fish is nice. There's no shortage of small peacefull fish that would be suitable. You obviously don't want large cichlids that would cause a disturbance to your Zebra's.

Austin (AFAIK from visits there) has pretty hard water, which may not be what the Zebras like, so you may consider buying a Reverse Osmosis unit to get really soft water. You'll need to "remineralize" or mix in tap-water to make it suitable for the fish, but Zebra's like pretty soft water. They're probably OK in harder water too, but if you want to spawn them, you'll want to make it as "perfect as possible".

Lighting: The fish lives at 10-15 meters depth, so you probably don't really need much lights at all. Just whatever YOU like to be able to see them...

Caves: You need the very least of one cave per male, and probably one per fish is a much better count. As to what caves, I've seen several different suggestions on commercial and home-made caves, and it seems that the fish don't really care as long as the breeding cave is suitable size. Suitable size means that it's just about the right size for the male to fit in, and a good bit longer than the male so that the female fits "inside" the male.

You need good oxygenation of the water, and need to keep it clean, as these fish don't like nitrate or nitrite very much at all (anything above 20ppm Nitrate is too much for these fish, and any ammonia or nitrite at all is bad). Lots of current, preferrably aimed towards the openings of some of the caves is a good way to provide a good environment for the fish. As to brands or models, it's up to you. You probably can't over-current these fish [ok, put a fire-engine-pump on the side of your 40g tank, and they probably won't like it, nor will you with the noise ]

Please as further questions if anything isn't clear, or I've missed anything important.

--
Mats

Hi zcat,

I understand your attraction to zebra plecs, we have a zebra breeding colony. There are 15 total fish right now of assorted ages, 8 of which are breeding age. They live in 2 tanks, each 20 gallons, and the young are in grow out boxes in the tanks. They're our favorite fish.

I have some bad news for you, you're going to have to wait a while on your colony, or pay an outrageous sum of money, as Brazil has banned the export of zebras due to their low population and you can only get them from breeders now. By the way, there is at least one dam going in on the river that they live in, so things don't look so good for the little guys.

If you want to get into breeding them, then I suggest you go to http://www.zebrapleco.com and read the forums there. That's where the breeders hang out and can give you good advice.

Good luck and I look forward to hearing about your new adventure.

I would really like to set up a clearwater (Xingu, Tocatins, Tapajos) rocky rapids tank with a breeding group of some Hypancistrus species. i recently bought a copy of the excellent "Cichlid Atlas 1" by Dr Uwe Romer.

There's some wonderful fish in there that would be perfect as Hypancistrus tankmates such as Crenicichla compressiceps, Crenicichla urosema and all the Teleocichla species.

although these are very hard to get hold of!