Growth rate of BN pleco fry.

[Turbosaurus]

I have a breedig pair of albio BN plecos. They had their first spawn in June, and their third just started swimming last night. The thing is the fry appear to be growing very slowly. I am not sure if that's natural, or if I am not feeding them enough. The first batch is about 6 months old and is only 1.5". At first I didn't think anything of it because it took their parents a year to grow from 1" to 3", but after 6 months and only getting to 1.5" I am thinking I may not be feeding them enough.

How quickly should they grow?

 

[TwoHobbies]

Sounds about right to me. I usually sell them to my LFS at 5-6mo. and they are not interested till they are at least 1". If your young are active then your feeding fine.
How big is your grow out tank, and how many are in there? Any pictures?

 

[Turbosaurus]

I'll try to get up a picture later today or tomorrow.

The tank is a 20L densely planted. There were about 60-80 little ones in the tank + 2 parents and a bunch of cherry shrimp. About 3 weeks ago I moved 1/2 to another 20L, also densely planted. They share the second tank with some other types of fry (angels and apistos) to help clean up the uneaten BBS. There is a new spawn that will start swimming any day now so its going to get crowded again soon.

 

[wataugachicken]

how often do you do water changes? the more/larger changes you do, the more easily the fry will be able to grow. they won't grow abnormally fast, but the cleaner the water is, the more likely it is that they will grow at their maximum potential rate.

 

[Turbosaurus]

Rarely- every 2-3 weeks I do 50-60%. I raise all my fish in densely planted tanks specifically becasue I am lazy when it comes to water changes. I've been raising some pretty nice angels and apistogramma sucessfully on this w/c schedule for years. I don't think its the W/c

Who knows, it could be. First lets try to find out if there really is a problem, or if these little guys are just slow to grow up. Be right back with pictures

 

[Turbosaurus]

Here are some pictures, but in the mean time I noticed that the BN I moved into a tank of fry who were getting BBS 2x a day were growing noticably faster than the ones who were not getting any animal protein in their diet.

I have started to include some high protein carnivore pellets in addition to the veggies and algae wafers to the tank with just the BNs and have noticed a significant increase in their growth rate. Thanks to everyone who helped out.

 

[pinkertd]

They don't need a lot of protein in their diets, just frequent feedings. If they don't have a 24/7 source of algae, they need to be fed 3-4 times a day minimum while growing. At 6 months they should have been a lot bigger. But feeding fry the way they need to be fed to meet their growth needs means dirty tank quickly. So maintenance goes way up on the tanks.

 

[stezatois]

if you have the tank space to move some to another tank i have heard that this provides them the extra room to grow. I dont know how much truth there is to it as my 2 bns are still only babies. I got them just before xmas (they were an xmas gift) and they have grown maybe 1/2" since i had them

 

[grannylvsfish]

with my babies I do water changes 2 time a week, the tank stays clean and my fry grow faster. I say more water changes to keep the tank cleaner and them growing faster and better. there nice looking by the way!

 

[TwoHobbies]

They look good to me. The ones I have that were born the first week of October are just over one inch now, so an inch and a half at 6 mo. seems about right to me. The belly on the one in the third picture doesn't look to be starving. Healthy BN babies of that age should have fat bellies.