Ancistrus Sp. Success!

Mic

New Member
Oct 31, 2016
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Los Angeles, CA
Here is a short recap of the last 7-8 months with my three BN plecos and their offspring.

^The father 'Jasper' - LF common BN, 5.5 inches long

^Mom No.1 'Pickles' - common BN, 4.5 inches long (she's camera shy, sorry!)

^Mom No.2 'Potato'/'Pope' - Albino BN, 4 inches long
Earlier this year, two of my plecos Jasper and Pickles attempted to spawn for the first time (AFAIK?), but the cluster of eggs ended up outside of Jasper's cave, and didn't make it. Soon after, my friend helped me upgrade the tank from 29 gal to 46 gal (switching substrate from gravel to sand and replacing plastic plants with live ones).
The thing that finally seemed to do it for my plecos was the addition of this thing:

...Which apparently is the sexiest object known to plecokind, because they went absolutely nuts for it.
A few days after Jasper banished the corydoras from his new cave (and they, in turn, invaded his old one), both females laid eggs in the urn within hours of each other, and this time Jasper decided to stay and take care of the eggs.

Jasper, his eggs, and the urn were moved to the old 29 gallon to be safe from the adult fish in the tank. A few days after the eggs hatched, Jasper had to be moved back to the 46 gallon tank, because he was preventing the fry from leaving the urn to forage for food.
Here the fry are at about three months of age:

And here they are at six months; they've become feisty little poop machines, as you can see in the background:

Quite a few have long fins like their dad!
As much as I'd love to keep them all, I don't have the space to properly house ~16-20ish? adult BNs. I'm gearing up to start selling/rehoming the babies sometime soon. They're averaging a little over an inch long now, the largest being almost 2 inches long.

By the way, I can't put the urn back in the big tank because they will spawn in it as soon as they realize it's there. No other cave seems to have the same appeal to them as that dang plastic urn. It's not even a proper cave guys!
 
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