L270 chocolate zebra

Irene0100

UK Support Team
May 14, 2009
4,271
0
36
Norfolk, UK
Just to add my experience to the other excellent L270 log from Cup.

TANK



size: 4ft long x 1 ft x 1 ft

substrate: some gravel and some sand, very thin (less than .5 cm)

decor: driftwood, mopani wood, java fern and moss and a few other plants.
various caves, rocks and bits of slate.

caves: made both porcelain clay, hand made by me and fired in local shop, and some standard slate caves joined with silicon.

filtration: 2 small internal filters with reasonable water movement
- fluval 2 and aquael small one with UV lights built in (I like uv for desease prevention), plus one external eheim echo with netting over intake.

heating: one 200w heater, old stuck thermostat so cant change temp!
but as fish are happy as it is I am not going to change it. It keeps the tank about 27 degrees.
the tank will get hotter sometimes in the summer as the room gets hot for July -aug heat waves,
but never seen it over 30, also struggles to stay at 27 in the winter as the room has no extra heating.

maintenance: filters and water tended to every few days. only one filter ever cleaned at a time, and a couple of buckets of water changed and intake net on eheim checked for blocking.

tankmates: Main mates are 3 adult Ancictrus Claro (marbled BNs -LDA08) who are also breeding plus some of their young and Choc zeb young.
Also a few panda cories and endler guppies.

the fish:
heres dad on the left and mum on the right




heres dad - you can see how hairy he is - and a youngster a couple of months old to the left.



and mum -with less hair


Breeding...

I had had the fish for a few years and no idea even if I had a female
-then sometimes I saw a few broken eggs but I had given up on them working out how to breed -
then one day I spotted a baby in the tank.
the male chose the deepest tank such that when he is inside and fanning you cant really see him at all.

here are some young only a few weeks old and already nibbling algae wafer.




they seem to manage about 10 young on average,
and it was only after severl broods that I had the courage to try and photo young in the cave..



you can see these are about ready to leave the cave and have quite a lot of pattern in them.

they young seem to like a wide range of food, I put in micro worms most days when they are just out as well as flakes,
Brineshrimp pellet, and tetra prima.
I put veggies in for the BNs too and the young like this,
here is some on cucumber
 
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