Why have my BN stopped spawning? bring me the experts.

[Turbosaurus]

I have some BN plecos in a densely planted 55 gallon tank with tons of hardscape. I had my first spawn in September and haven't seen anything since. The tank has two big driftwood stumps that create and arch, each with a good sized cave underneith with very small openings. Perfect for breeding- along with tons of cracks and crevaces between rocks and other driftwood branches. The amount of hidey-holes in the tank is insane. I tried to get a photo, but all you can really see is the reflection of me and the 90 next to it.

They are mostly around a year and a half old. I have two def. mature males, about 4 certain mature females (two if them albinos that sucessfully bread as a trio with a different male in another tank) and 3 juvies that I can't sex yet. There does not seem to be any agression between the fish, althuogh the tank is so dense it is possible there is stuff going on that I don't see.

I feed them flake in the morning (mix of staple and veggie flake) and two nice sized wedges of zuchini or yellow sqaush every other day, and the occasional leaf of romaine.

There are about 10 ember tetras in the tank with them that are still teeny tiny. They didn't bother the babies the first time the BNs spawned, and although I removed the babies - it took me about two weeks to catch them all- so I think I would have noticed, or the babies woulnd't have lasted that long.

The tank is enriched with pressurized CO2 on a PH controller, but not enough to stress the fish noticably. I assume about 20PPM at the max, sorry I can't be more specific.

I just checked the temp and its 80 degrees with a PH of ~6, although it could be lower, I haven't calibrated the meter in a long time. My TDS is 119 PPM, Kh and GH are both 0 degrees. (LOVE my tap water:D) I do 50% water changes every 2 weeks. Filtration is a Fluval 404 with a sponge prefilter.

SO what's the deal? What can I do to encourage them? or what am I doing wrong that they are not spawning?

[Turbosaurus]

here is a crappy photo, will try to get better pics when the room is dark.

[pinkertd]

I would suspect it is diet. The females need some protein to continue to breed. Start throwing in some frozen bloodworms several times a week. Have you seen the females plump up at all?

And your water changes are a lot less than mine. I do 80% changeout every week.

There's always the possibility that the males are interfering with each other's breeding. I had two males in my 75G. One was slower to achieve breeding readiness than the other even though he's the larger of those two males. The first couple of spawns the smaller male had, the larger male didn't even notice. Then the spawning hormone kicked in. As the smaller male began to clean the cave in prep for spawning, the bigger male started to hang around the cave entrance and just irritate the smaller male. I began to worry that the larger male would interfere and I certainly didn't want them duking it out to the death. So I moved the large male out and gave him two females of his own, which he promptly spawned with.

And embers love bristlenose pleco fry. One of my new hatches floated out of the cave while daddy was fluttering his long fins and before I could grab a net, the ember sucked the fry down. Some will hide well enough to escape the embers, but my embers are always in amonst all the thick plant leaves.

[Turbosaurus]

I was hoping you'd chime in Debbie.

The females do look really plump - all the time. Which is why I am so confused. I don't know if its fat bellies from gorging on "good eats" or what. I will start to introduce blood worms every other day. I should probably cut back on the other foods once I introduce bloodworms, right? they are def. fat well fed fish, so maybe I will just replace the flake with bloodworm's, but on second thought, my veggie flake alone is much more nutritious than the blood worms. Flake is min 28% protein, 9% min fat, 6% max fiber and 10% max moisture. The staple is even higher protein, 55/7/4/8, The worms are 6/0.5/0.9/89 respectively. I'll try worms anyway- perhaps imitating a more natural diet will help them "get back to nature" so to speak?

Will males try to eat each others eggs- or do they just get so involved in fighting over prime territory that they forget about the breeding? I really hope I don't have to go in there to try and catch them.. took me forever to catch them in their other tanks to move them into this one- getting them out of here will be a real job. I guess I'll have to try it. Will females do the same? Or is it safe to have many girls in the tank together?

What about your temperatures? I have been searching all over the internet today and read in one place that temps between 74-76 are better?

Also, what is your Ca/Mg levels like? (hardness) could my water be TOO soft?

As for weekly water changes, do you really think every other week is too little? My nitrates and phosphates are 0 because of the plants. I stopped dosing ferts about 8 weeks ago thinking that may be interfering. How about the CO2? Ever breed them in a CO2 enriched tank?

I guess if I am going to move one of the males I should work on removing the ember tetras too. They are so small, I was looking at their mouths today, they have trouble eating whole blood worms.... But I know you know what you are talking about, so I will move them for now- if I am going to get in there with a net anyway, I might as well catch them. Do you think there is any small schooling fish that would be safe to keep in the tank with them? This is (was?) primarily a show tank, but If I can't have anyone else in there, so be it.

[Turbosaurus]

And I feel like a jerk for going back to this, becasue I know you know what you're doing but I am sitting here looking at these little teeny tiny embers and I just cant get over the idea they could eat BN fry. Are you sure you have embers and its not a mistaken tetra ID? How big are they? I don't have a single one over a 1/2 inch. I even took out my tape measure to check, thinking maybe I was underestimating their size...

[toddnbecka]

Maybe try putting in a couple caves? Maybe a new/better spawning site would help things along. I also feed mine canned green beans and canned asparagus. Still have plenty of zucchini and yellow spuash in the freezer, but the canned foods aren't as messy to clean up. They simply disappear instead of leaving strings and debris to clog my filter sponges.

[pinkertd]

I realize the protein content of manufactured foods is probably higher than bloodworms. There's just something about the worms that helps condition them. Are they absolutely required? No. I rarely use them and can actually lengthen the time between spawns just by cutting back on the fresh zuchinni. If your females are plumping up, there's something else going on in the tank. I don't think it's your parameters. My tanks are at 82-84F. My water is naturally hard, and I don't think that your's being soft is the issue either.

You don't really know where they are spawning. It may be on the back or underside of a piece of driftwood, semi exposed to the other male pleco but also allowing the brand new hatches to go loose before they should. The male has no way to stop them once they float away from him. The nice thing about pleco caves is that they are closed in the back and the dad guards the front door. It's the only way in and out. The cave protects the egg mass, the fry with egg sacs as well as for any other tank inhabitant that may want to harm them. I can also suspect that the other male may try to eat them. It seems it would be instinct that they wouldn't want another males fry to survive. I can only tell you I didn't like the way my large male acted outside the cave as the small male was getting it ready. None of my females wanted to breed with the larger male, they all lined up for the smaller male. The females pick their male. Females will not bother other females eggs. But if they get kicked off the spawning sight and wind up in the gravel, every fish will begin to eat them, including the other plecos. I have one adult male in my 75G with 7 females. Only because I'm short on males. The larger male has two females and he spawns with both of them. Í've had 5 females get into the cave, one right after the other, with my smaller male.

If your eggs are being laid anywhere else other than a cave with a single opening/exit, while the dad will guard them as best he can, they are like little feathers once they hatch. Any slight movement will get them "sailing" into the water away from dad. They don't have an instinct to get back to dad. And their nice bright orange color is like a live food flag as they float away. Especially if this happens within the first 4 or 5 days when they are heads and tails on big egg sacs. And they are really tiny and very soft. Yes I have real embers. 36 in each of my breeder tanks. And when I had an escaped floater with an egg sack, it was gone in an instant in that embers mouth. Surprised the heck out of me. My embers are always grabbing whatever is floating in the water column. Maybe mine do it more because I also feed the embers and cories in there with live white worms. At this age, the fry with the egg sacs do not have the ability to really swim where they want to go. If you get caves, then you can leave the embers in there. Very few egg fry will accidentally get out of the cave.

See if you can get a couple of pleco caves and position them i the front of the tank, tucked in between the plants but where you can observe what's going on. I position mine so that I can see exactly what's going on.

[DavidZ]

Don't know if this helps, but had a similar issue with Angels and had to raise PH to 6.5 from 6.

[pinkertd]

Yeah, I'm not sure what if any effect low ph has on BN spawning, never had to deal with it. My tanks are low tech, tap ph is 7.6 - 7.8 and stable at that in the tanks. It's worth researching. Most people have ph a bit higher than that.

[Turbosaurus]

So ya think they are spawning and I am just missing it because they are getting eaten?

Mine are brown BTW. There are two albino females in there, but the rest are brown long fin. Perhaps that is why it didn't appear that the embers were bothering the first batch- better camoflauge? the yolk sacks were gone by the time I saw them. Or perhaps there was a mix of albino and brown and the albino were lunch before I ever got a peek at them. Who knows. I only pulled about 19 so there were definately MIAs.

Okay- so new plan. I will try some pleco caves positioned in the tank so I can peek inside them and see what I can see. At least that will help me determine if Spawning is actually going on and the little ones are snacks or if they aren't spawning at all. That should probably be step one. Where did you get yours debbie (the caves)? Do you think the males will automatically prefer them over the crevaces and cracks in the tank's hardscape?

Do you have any BN fry survive in the tank with your embers? or is it a "circle of life" every man for themselves kinda thing?

[pinkertd]

I get my caves from Rosenthal Pottery, here's a link. http://www.rosenthalpottery.com/plecocaves.html I use the #4 caves. started out with the ones that taper to a point in the back and switched when I had a female get her head stuck in the back of it behind some eggs. I only left my first spawn on it's own in the 75G. It's very thickly planted. I thought it would be ideal to for the pleco fry to start off. I had seen the spawn before they left the cave so I knew about how many there were. As I watched the tank, they seemed to not grow as quickly as they should. You can't feed the fry constantly in a large tank like that, they need to eat constantly. So I pulled them out. I found at least half the fry had disappeared. I figured it was from lack of food. I don't think the embers will bother them once they loose their egg sacks and stop floating around. If they were regular bristlenose maybe I wouldn't care that half of them disappeared, but the L144's are too valuable to loose so many and the spawn sizes are much smaller than the pucallpa bristlenose I was raised. The pucallpa's would have at least 100 at a spawn.

I think they will definitely choose a small protected cave over another place in the tank. You should see the males go in the cave frequently about a week before the female is ready to mate with him. He cleans and cleans it. Tidy little dads!

[Turbosaurus]

Here are some pics of the fish. At least we can be sure they are well fed and have plenty of driftwood to rasp on.

[pinkertd]

They are beautiful! That brown female's getting nice and plump with eggs!

[Barbie]

I'd raise the pH to 6.5 or higher, if they were mine. Do a couple big cool water changes and you should see a spawn in a week or two. IME, common ancistrus don't see the humor in a pH below 6. If you want to spawn fish in those parameters, you should look into a blackwater species like L180 or L183. Putting an air stone in the tank to offgas CO2 at night might also push your dissolved oxygen levels up and that can make them more amenable to getting frisky.

Barbie

[Turbosaurus]

Thanks Barbie. The CO2 is on a PH controller, it turns off automatically so it stays constant and the gas doesn't run at night. I have decided to turn off the CO2 completely for now just to see if that was having an effect, and suppliment with half doses of excel instead (which won't effect pH at all). I am reluctant to add anything to increase pH becasue I always do more damage than good when I mess with it chemically. If the pH doesn't come up to the mid sixes without the CO2, I will add a handful of crushed coral to the filter and see if I can up it that way.

I baked some sculpey clay caves (4 of them) today, and added them to the tank. Each is a little different, taller, or squatter, or larger or smaller, so the 2 males can pick the shape they like best. Each has one opening roughly 1" wide by 1/2" tall facing a pane of glass so that if I have to I can shine a flashlight in through the glass and see who's home. I have hid them in the java ferns. It is amazing what you can hide in all that mess. I've already seen tails swishing around inside some. No one has had a chance to "move in" yet but they are definitely "house hunting"

[pinkertd]

Swishing tails and house hunting......good signs!!!! LOL! Keep up posted!