Spawned D. Perugiae and an unrelated conundrum

[Ltygress]

Its clearly breeding season here!

But the best news, in my opinion, is my very first D. Perugiae spawn! I have kept them off an on since 2015 but something always went wrong. This time they were housed with very young red terrors, but I dumped one of my daphnia cultures in it. About a week later I saw eggs! But the female did not want to let me keep looking at them, so by the time I got the camera she was covering them very well.

Since then, they have successfully hatched and she is still watching over them. I moved her and the entire cave into a floating breeder box. I made the mistake of looking in there after they hatched, with a flashlight, and several babies came zooming out of the cave, still carrying big yolk sacs. So no more looking in the cave now!

The tank they are floating in though, surprised me two days ago with newly-hatched peacock gudgeons! Those are in a specimen container with an airstone now.

Meanwhile, I have pantanalensis cories that have laid eggs almost every single day for two weeks now! I have finally run out of containers to put the eggs in to keep them safe! But thankfully not before...

I have NO IDEA what else spawned, but I pulled eggs from my 125G show tank late last week. The tank includes three Lemon BE Bristlenose, Syn. Flavetaeniatus, Green and Blue Phantom plecos, and some Chameleon whiptails. The eggs were abandoned and I scooped them out and into an egg tumbler. I don't think it would be the Synodontis because the eggs were clumped together, and if I am not mistaken, Synodontis eggs don't clump together like that. I actually figured it would be lemon BE bristlenose, but lemon BE is recessive and these are turning out DARK! They have hatched and their entired body is looking to be brown!

Not to mention, the Lemon BE male has day-old hatchlings in his own cave. (I pulled him earlier today to put in a different tank.)

I am thinking it isn't Blue or Green phantom because I only have one of each and the green is very small - no where near adult size. The blue is larger and definitely male, but the green just isn't close enough.

So that leaves me with possible Chameleon whiptails. As of right now the eyes on the fry appear to be too far to the sides for a chameleon whiptail, but maybe that is just a fresh-hatched thing? When the egg tumbler has a very strong flow, they all seem to try attaching to the sides like a pleco, but it seems like their mouth is too small or just doesn't grab on well.

They probably need to lose the yolk sac for me to be able to figure out what they are. By then I should be able to see a tiny version of the adults. But until then, I really have no clue!

[bekateen]

Hi @Ltygress,

That's a wonderful problem to have. Good for you. As you described the eggs of the unknown species, I was wondering if they were more of a pile or a flat plate in perspective. Although I haven't kept the whiptails you have there, my understanding is that their egg mass is more of a flat raft than a pile, as might be obtained from plecos.

Good luck with them all!

Cheers,
Eric

[Ltygress]

I have unintentionally spawned marble whiptails before, and yes their eggs were lined up flat, like a sheet of bubble wrap. These eggs were... somewhere between that and the blob-like pleco mass. So I really have no idea. The eggs were definitely discarded, so maybe a chameleon whiptail abandoned them because he wasn't comfortable on them?

They have about one more day until the yolk sacs are gone. After that I plan to move them into a 10G, alongside blue velvet shrimp. I should get a pretty good idea of what they are soon after that.

I did get a very short video of them, but it's on my computer. My computer can't post here because Spamhaus thinks my IP is dangerous (even though the actions were done ages ago). Working between the phone and computer is slow, but I will try to get it up on YouTube and share the link here, soon.

[Ltygress]

The yolk sacs are pretty much gone now. They still have yellow bellies, but their stomach is basically flat otherwise. And... they are staying attached to the glass. I've moved them into the 10G now and they are definitely attaching themselves to the glass and other surfaces like a typical pleco. They also just simply wiggle a lot more than the marble whiptails did. So they are plecos.

But which kind?

The bristlenose are all Blue-Eyed Lemon. There are POSSIBLY two females and a male, but it's tough to say. One "female" seems to have very short bristles, and only around her mouth. But as I learned before, Blue-Eyed Lemon are recessive. I bred one to a Green Dragon once before to save both color morphs, and *nothing* came up with Blue Eyes or Lemon bodies until the next generation. And even in the second generation, it was very few that came up BE Lemon. So that told me the traits had to be recessive.

The green phantom (not sure which one of the two species it is) might be pushing 4 inches at the very most. The blue phantom is closer to 7 inches. So the green phantom should be too small and too young, unless it was seriously stunted at some point. It's supposed to be wild caught, so it's hard to say how old it really could be.

There are no other plecos in the tank. Of course there's always the remote possibility that they are hybrids, but that would be across two different genus (bristlenose and phantoms), not just two different species!

So really, I have no clue what these guys are going to be. The only hope now is to wait for them to grow up and see.