Home-made pleco spawning caves

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ridout
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by ridout »

Here is my step by step guide into making your own clay caves.

I want to say thanks to my two friends Bean and Martin as together we have made caves for the past couple of years. Many "cave nights" with trial and error of different techniques until we were happy with the out come of the caves.

I want to add this is what we did to save ourselves money and also enjoy the hobby a little more, in making the caves our fish breed in. I hope this helps you too.

I will post links for the clay we have used if it is requested.

Weaponry from the kitchen you will need to steal is as follows..

Cling film
Grease proof paper
Tall glass
Knife

Picture 1 shows the "cave moulds" (posh name for stollen rolling pin from the kitchen and two bits of wood from broom handles). Use a Stanley blade to make the end of the cave mould rounded off.

2. Wrap cling film over the cave mould. This will ensure the clay doesn't stick to cave mould.

3. Using a knife (stollen from the kitchen). Dip into the water and cut the desired amount of clay.

4. Get the clay into a ball and push down onto the cave mould, squeezing around the cave mould as you go.

5. Starting to take shape now. Make the cave to what ever length you want.

6. Final touches. Roll the cave over the grease proof paper. You will find that the cave will start to get tidier in appearance. The cave will come loose around the mould now. Dip the knife into the water and cut around the end (entrance to cave) to leave the clay with a smooth surface.

7-8. Pull the cave mould out slowly. You will be left with the cling film still in the cave.

9. Twist the cling film. This helps bring the clim film away from the cave. Note. Be gentle with cave at this point. Slowly pull out the cling film.

10. This picture shows what you'll be left with. Throw the cling film away.

11. The cave is done. At this point you can tweak it into a "D" or Triangle shape, whatever suits you.

Place the cave on to a fresh bit of grease proof paper, where you can leave it to dry. It should take 7-10 days to dry properly and ready for the kiln. We pay our local potter to use his kiln to fire our caves. We prefer to have them fired when he has the kiln at the glazing temperature, which I think is about 1300 degrees but I could be wrong? Once fired and at home you will need to file off any sharp bits in and around the cave.

They're now ready to use.

Good luck and please let me know how you get on if you try it out. Have patience as it will take a few goes to get it right.

Ps. I hope you like the wall of children's art? 2 and 4 :)
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ridout
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by ridout »

Next pictures.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by ridout »

Next
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

Thanks, ridout, for the photos and step-by-step technique. Very simple!

Cheers, Eric
Last edited by bekateen on 10 Sep 2017, 20:22, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by pleconut »

:d Seems that I finally found a cave big enough for this boy. =))
Biggest BN I've ever seen!
Biggest BN I've ever seen!
Thank you Paul!
Thank you Paul!
One of the ones @Mol_PMB made that will hopefully be put to good use. :-C
Thanks Teresa
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by pleconut »

:d The above cave was put to very good use by my BN pair as I saw them spawning in it last night. Alternative caves were ordered but it became obvious he liked this one so I left him with his drilled out log. This morning he's fanning away.I have attempted to take a peek. But a big seven inch BN is in the way. =)). :YMAPPLAUSE: @MoL_PMB looks like you have made a proven breeding cave. :-BD
Thanks Teresa
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

From another thread (Re: DIY Pleco Cave ideas PLEASE!!), this post describes how to cut slate for caves without using a power saw:
Jobro wrote:Using a saw for slate is overkill. It's so easy to break it to a certain degree of precision. A hammer and a chisel are enough.

Maybe I will make a video next time I "cut" some slate. I fix the slate to the worktable with a wood lath and two clamps. Place the wood lath exactly next to the line, where you want to break it. Now move the chisel along the wood lath up and down the slate with some pressure in order to carve a line in there. Once the carve is 1-2mm deep (this goes pretty fast and easy in slate) just gentle hammer the chisel into the carve. Do it at some different spots along the carve and it will break nice and cleanly along that carve. Hope this is comprehensible without pictures.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

My first attempt at a drilled-wood cave: A friend gave me several 3-year old maple branches (2.5-3.5" diameter). These came out of his compost pile. They are well-aged, dry as a bone, and hard as a rock. I tried to avoid overheating the drill bit, but it came out really hot every few moments (I'd give it a break). I never pushed very forcefully, but the wood is really hard.

This cave is 1" diameter, about 4" deep. Let's see how the fish like it.

Next will be a 1.5" diameter cave.

Cheers, Eric
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by stuby »

I use oak for my wood caves...... even harder to drill than maple is! lol Try wetting the wood/drill bit so it doesn't overheat as much/as fast. And of course as you found out.... take your time doing it.

Chuck
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

Thanks for the suggestions. :-)
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

Picked up three 8-ft bamboo poles yesterday (one for me, one for a friend, and one for whatever) to cut for large pleco caves. These are nice poles: Large diameter (2.0"-3.75" OD), not cracked, and lots of nodes (joints). These will make 8-10 caves each. First cave cut. 12" long x 3" ID. I'm pleased.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

I made some wooden pleco caves on my turning machine.
One with a removeable backend to have easy access to the fry.
IMAG0200.jpg
IMAG0199.jpg


Sorry for the holding the camera high instead of wide ~X(
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

Beautiful!
Cheers, Eric
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

I think I got the hang of it, now :D
IMAG0362.jpg
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by TwoTankAmin »

@Jobro

Those wood caves look really nice. I wonder how they will react when submerged in terms of the back end removable cap maintaining its fit. I have seen things swell or shrink some in water and suddenly a cap wont remove easily or it will not stay in place. I am curious to know how your caves stand up over time.

The good part is when you drop a clay cave you usually end up with a 3-d cave puzzle. A wood cave will remain intact.

One Q, do you have to pre-soak them to make them sink or is the wood dense enough that it sinks dry?
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

Those caves look spectacular, jobro. I hope they work. I too wonder how swelling will affect them. I'm curious, could you water-log them and then drill them? I imagine that makes drilling a lot more difficult, but maybe drilling "pre-swollen" wood can avoid the issue after the fact.

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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

You guys are absolutely right. The wood I am using now is beech. It is pretty sturdy and hard and dense, but it will swim if not presoaked. I remembered how Eric talked about boiling his bamboo caves to make them sink and applied that to my wood caves.

After some boiling they will sink.

Now for the worse part, they do also like to deform a little. They turn out a little oval / egg-shaped. And I was pretty scared about the fittings on the ends after the wood swelling and deforming just like you guys anticipated. However, the ends still fit good. Meaning they won't come off by accident. And while not perfectly easy to remove by hand, it is quite doable with some turning /twisting /revolving the end piece while trying to pull it out.

I will do some more caves in different sizes, and will do pre and after cooking pictures for you to get an idea. The ones I made are allready in use and some of my plecos really seem to like them, especially the Ancistrus and Panaqolus species. Hope I will have a L397 spawn in one of them, soon.

Ofcourse it will take some more long time observations to tell if they are practical or more of a wasted effort :D

Here is a 30mm and 38mm inner diameter cave =)
IMG-20181117-WA0006.jpeg
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by dw1305 »

Hi all,
I like the idea of these.
Jobro wrote: 21 Nov 2018, 10:23......You guys are absolutely right. The wood I am using now is beech......
You could try Alder (Alnus glutinosa, A. incana, A. cordata), or Wych Elm (Ulmus glabra) wood if you can find them, they are timbers resistant to rotting and warping under water.

cheers Darrel
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

Yeah, these would be great, darrel, but they seem pretty hard to come by. At least in bigger quantitys. It's usually easy to get thinner pieces of any wood, but I need a thickness of at least 40mm, which usually comes with quite some higher expanses.

On the other hand, while I used alderwood for tank decoration, I found it to be easy prey for plecos and it might not dissolve fast due to water and bacteria but due to their appetite. The wood seems pretty soft and therefore is a welcomed addition to any panaqolus diet.

I picked beech because it is widely available and prices are not cheap but affordable. Hoped the hardness of beech would help against rotting. but we will need to see how they fare long time.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

Thanks for the extra details.

Cheers, Eric
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by dw1305 »

Hi all,
Jobro wrote: 21 Nov 2018, 12:43On the other hand, while I used alderwood for tank decoration, I found it to be easy prey for plecos and it might not dissolve fast due to water and bacteria but due to their appetite. The wood seems pretty soft and therefore is a welcomed addition to any panaqolus diet......
That is useful to know, it is quite a soft wood.

cheers Darrel
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by panaque »

My spawn in oak caves and it takes them about a year to chew through a 1cm thick wall. I also have beech and oak from my local woods in their tank and they REALLY like the beech. It disappears about three times as fast as the oak. So what I’m getting at is that you may need to experiment with wall thickness when you use these beech wood caves for Panaqolus.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

panaque wrote: 21 Nov 2018, 20:13 My spawn in oak caves and it takes them about a year to chew through a 1cm thick wall. I also have beech and oak from my local woods in their tank and they REALLY like the beech. It disappears about three times as fast as the oak. So what I’m getting at is that you may need to experiment with wall thickness when you use these beech wood caves for Panaqolus.
This fast? Oh wow insane...

Oak comes at about double the price of beech from what I can find. Oak would have been my wood of choice, but costs led me to beech. Beech should be pretty much as hard as oak going by brinell hardness. *Phew* I hope these caves will hold longer than a year...
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by dw1305 »

Hi all,
Jobro wrote: 22 Nov 2018, 12:32Beech should be pretty much as hard as oak going by brinell hardness.
I wonder if it is the tannin content of the Oak (Quercus) wood that makes it less palatable than the Beech wood?

cheers Darrel
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

dw1305 wrote: 22 Nov 2018, 14:05 I wonder if it is the tannin content of the Oak (Quercus) wood that makes it less palatable than the Beech wood?
Might be worth a scientific essay :D Subjects like these are so hard to investigate in private means :-\

Here some shots of the process:
Tools used are wood lewis bits ("schlangenbohrer" in german)
IMAG0393.jpg
For now I got 26, 28, 30, 36 and 40mm diamaters. Might add up 32, 34 and 38mm later.

The wood:
IMAG0394.jpg
2x 100x4cm, 2x 100x5cm

My Lathe / Mill
IMAG0395.jpg

Had to machine some special collets to hold the wood, even the hardest woods are still too soft...
IMAG0396.jpg

The wood fits snuggly in there :)
IMAG0398.jpg
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

Cut some 40mm pieces. shorter and longer ones. Will make 26 and 28mm caves for my smaller species.
IMAG0397.jpg
What looks like a little step in between these pictures is actually a lot of time consuming work. Just mounting the wood centric and making a center hole before actually drilling is taking up a lot of time. And still each cave will come out a little different. Machining metall seems to be way easier than wood :d
IMAG0400.jpg
Next step is sanding the inside of the cave. Another time eater...

here I prepared some smaller pieces for the lids /caps.
IMAG0401.jpg
Since every cave is different (meaning different in measured hole diameter as well as center of the hole - the pain and beauty of working with nature's materials) I have to fit every cap to it's cave. Meaning, a cap might not fit another cave. You can imagine the amount of manual labor put into this process.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

Machining a lid/cap:
IMAG0483.jpg
When it fits, I will mount it in the cave.
IMAG0484.jpg
And sand the cave with its lid/cap
IMAG0485.jpg
finished cap and cave:
IMAG0487.jpg
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

Finished caves:
IMAG0490.jpg
IMAG0489.jpg
IMAG0488.jpg
Tomorrow I will boil these and show you how they deform.
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by Jobro »

A bunch of caves ready for boiling:
IMAG0513.jpg
And here is where I made a fatal mistake...
IMAG0514.jpg
All the caves fit so nicely into the pot and I was quite happy to not have to boil twice, that I forgot they would extend during the process...
IMAG0516.jpg
They deformed each other badly and ended up stuck pretty hard in the pot :D
I managed to remove them. The caps /ends still fit good. Haha they look pretty natural now. And even more unique... But this should give you a glimpse of how they will expand during boiling.


On the good side. I added these caves yesterday and finally found my L204 male claiming a cave after not doing anything of the like for the last year... So I am pretty happy with these deformed wood caves for now :d
IMAG0523.jpg
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Re: Home-made pleco spawning caves

Post by bekateen »

On a whim, after reading a FB post about plecos breeding in a transparent glass ball, I tried to imagine other, more cave-like (in shape/proportion) glass objects that might substitute as breeding caves. I picked up these four green glass vases for $4USD total (for all 4, not each). They are 8"/20cm deep, 2.13"/5.4cm wide at their mouth, and 1.67"/4.3cm wide at their narrow neck.

Not knowing their past, they may have held plant fertilizers or worse (as a flower vase), so before use I washed each with gentle soap and hot water then I'm leaving them to soak overnight in clean rinse water.

I'm always searching for slightly larger than 1.5" diameter cave for the mustard spots. Let's try these caves with them.

Wishfully,
Eric
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Buying caves from https://plecocaves.com? Plecocaves sponsor Bekateen's Fishroom. Use coupon code "bekateen" (no quotes) for 15% off your order.
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