I have a young pair of dwarf bristlenose plecos. Usually they stay on opposite sides of the tank. Their only interaction is usually a scuffle over food. Yesterday someone dug a big hole under the end of a piece of driftwood. Today they are both in it. They aren't DOING anything, but they usually don't come close to each other, so I'm suspicious. Are they going to make babies in there?should I break this up? When they have eggs, do they ignore them, or become violently territorial?
Umm...are my bristlenose plecos making a love nest?
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If they are old enough to spawn, they probably are.
The male will trap the female in the nest, usually a cave of some sort but they will dig under something if no caves are available, until she lays the eggs and he can fertilize them. He'll let the female out after that. She will usually be considerably thinner. The male will fan at the entrance to keep water flowing over the eggs. Some eggs will drift out sometimes. He may or may not put them back. You can put those in an egg tumbler to try to hatch them.
Fry will live off the yolk for several days and pop will try to keep them in the cave/nest. After the yolk is gone fry will come out to eat. Pop may try to herd them back in.
Good luck.
The male will trap the female in the nest, usually a cave of some sort but they will dig under something if no caves are available, until she lays the eggs and he can fertilize them. He'll let the female out after that. She will usually be considerably thinner. The male will fan at the entrance to keep water flowing over the eggs. Some eggs will drift out sometimes. He may or may not put them back. You can put those in an egg tumbler to try to hatch them.
Fry will live off the yolk for several days and pop will try to keep them in the cave/nest. After the yolk is gone fry will come out to eat. Pop may try to herd them back in.
Good luck.
It's a hole she can easily escape if she wants to. Damn. Are they going to make a million babies I have to find homes for? And more importantly, is he going to become violent in defense of them? I have a fully stocked 30 gallon tank. There isn't a lot of room for everyone else to hide.
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If there other fish in there the fry might not make it...
This might sound mean, but that might be for the best. I don't have another tank to raise a bunch of fry in. Maybe my LFS would take them? Or maybe the corys and tetras and Bolivian rams will eat them. The circle of life, etc. My main concern is that the plecos will get viloent defending them. They are the largest, bossiest fish in the tank already, I don't want hormones and parenting to send them on a rampage.
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I wouldn't worry. If you do nothing it will be a small miracle if you have any more than 1 or 2 survive. they will most likely be snacks for the other inhabitants. Don't worry about the parents, as i understand they will guard the eggs after they are mobile they are more or less on their own.
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The female will have no interest in the kids once she laid the eggs. The male will guard them for about 2 to 3 weeks until they have hatched and used up their egg sacks. But he won't be aggressive. He will just block the other fish from getting at the fry. When they used up the egg sacks, he lets them go out in the tank. Your rams will eat them. The corys will not and with the tetras it depends on the size and type. The pleco fry will be about .7 cm when the dad lets them out of his "cave", so I really only see the rams as a problem, unless you have a large type tetra. Most LFS will take pleco fry when they reached about 1.5 inches, which they will reach in about 2-3 months. A batch can have anywhere from 15 to 100 fry, but a first batch is often infertile and just a practise run. Once they start, however, they usually keep going. First surviving batches tend to be smaller than subsequent ones. Again there are exeptions to this rule, my first BN pleco pair that bred had 107 fry and all survived. I counted them as I sold them and shipped them out. This may not have been their first batch as I had larger fish in the tank with them and had to move the cave with the fry and dad to another tank for this batch to make it. Today I have all my male Bns in one tank, the females in another as I ran out of space for the kids pretty quickly.
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Yea I really don't like fish that continuously breed in my tanks. My friend struggled pretty hard to keep his convict fry alive. You just feel bad letting the poor things get eaten but then with 50+, its difficult to raise them all without having the proper breeding set up. He ended up donating the first batch to the LFS and then gave up after a couple more batches and re-homed the female convict.
Just gotta make sure you have a method to raise and offload them!
Just gotta make sure you have a method to raise and offload them!
If I had a second tank I would give it a try and see if my LFS wanted them. It kind of breaks my heart that they are going to be food, but that tank is stocked to the limit and I can't add one more pleco to it, let alone 15-100. I do have an office tank that I am trying to cycle but it's taking forever. Once I can add more fish to the office tank I will probably move one of the adults over. That'll solve the breeding problem!
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