What the heck is my pleco doing?

[excuzzzeme]

It is very common for a female to have bristles. If the bristles do not fork at the top they are either still quite young or possibly female. Sorry I forget the anatomical name for it. It is also common for females to have less bristles than a male. The fact they fight is not indication of sex. Plecos are not overly fond of others of their own species regardless of sex. They will share a cave only briefly to spawn, then it's each to their own cave.

 

[ManEatingShrimp]

Hmm... Well my plecos do have a few caves but they don't seem to have claimed one. The caves are big so sometimes cherry barbs will invade when a pleco is hiding in one but they don't seem to have actually claimed territory. It may be because they started off in a 10 gallon and did not have any caves and just got used to being in the open.

The black pleco does have bristles with forks on the end and the albino does not have bristles. The albino is 1-2 months younger though. This is very interesting I will definitely do some research on pleco breeding. It would be great if they bred without me doing anything.
Thanks for the responses

 

[BettaFishMommy]

my juvie bn plecos are babies from my adult female. i had a male adult for a while (rehomed him when i broke down a tank and sold it), and i did absolutely nothing to entice them to breed. heck, i didn't even know they had bred until the day i broke the tank down and saw bn fry flitting about in the nearly empty tank! feel kinda bad, because i'm sure a few ended up down the kitchen drain when i was draining the tank

 

[bgourami320]

If there is a chance to be female she may have laid eggs and is fanning them without a male present. They won't develop but she doesn't know that. The second option is that it is a male trying to make a "cave" or home.

Beyond those guesses who knows?

I agree with excuzzeme, I have 2 BN's and I saw the male in a cave and his fins
fluttering. I was thinking that maybe eggs were laid but haven't seen anything yet.

 

[ManEatingShrimp]

Turns out he was guarding eggs. I did a water change and saw a few babies sitting in the rock crevice. I managed to catch 20 of them and moved them into my 10 gallon shrimp tank for now.

took these with my phone so sorry for the quality