chriscoli
Administrator
I've been trying on and off to figure out what sort of encouragement my Synodontis lucipinnis need to get spawning. I got two groups of 6 or so from Dave at various points in the past and they've been growing out quite nicely. I've been seeing lots of chasing behavior, so I figured that was a good sign.
Well, after trying unsuccessfully to gather a batch of eggs using all sorts of variations on the overturned pot on a bowl of marbles method, I've come to two conclusions:
1. these fish take a while to mature
2. too many catfish in the spawning hut does not make for a successful spawn
Although I've seen lots of chasing, and what I thought were plump females. It didn't compare to what I started seeing a few weeks ago. Same chasing, but now the females were ENORMOUS! (seriously, they looked like each had swallowed a large marble). I renewed my efforts to collect a batch of eggs, but ALL of the catfish (about 9 or 10 at this point) ended up dogpiling in the spawning hut all at once and it was just fin and whisker mayhem in there.
So, I evicted a few fish from a 10 gallon tank which had become overgrown with java moss and subwassertang, and put a plump female and what I was guessing were 2 males in with her. I put a coconut hut over a huge wad of moss and checked on them every morning and evening. Within 48 hrs, the female was skinny again so I pulled all three fish out. When I did this, I disturbed the coconut hut and moss and saw a whole bunch of eggs go floating around the tank. YAY! success!
So I left the tank there without fish....hopefully just eggs. I watched, and tried not to poke at the moss too much. To be honest, I gave up last week and figured I'd try putting them back in again soon. Yesterday I did a double-take, though, because I saw fry!
I have no idea how many are in there, but every time I look at the tank I see between 4 and 6 right off the bat. Hopefully they're not too fragile. They are really the weirdest fry I've seen....extremely white and active, and they have a hair-fine long whisker on each side of their face that make them nearly as wide as they are long.
Well, after trying unsuccessfully to gather a batch of eggs using all sorts of variations on the overturned pot on a bowl of marbles method, I've come to two conclusions:
1. these fish take a while to mature
2. too many catfish in the spawning hut does not make for a successful spawn
Although I've seen lots of chasing, and what I thought were plump females. It didn't compare to what I started seeing a few weeks ago. Same chasing, but now the females were ENORMOUS! (seriously, they looked like each had swallowed a large marble). I renewed my efforts to collect a batch of eggs, but ALL of the catfish (about 9 or 10 at this point) ended up dogpiling in the spawning hut all at once and it was just fin and whisker mayhem in there.
So, I evicted a few fish from a 10 gallon tank which had become overgrown with java moss and subwassertang, and put a plump female and what I was guessing were 2 males in with her. I put a coconut hut over a huge wad of moss and checked on them every morning and evening. Within 48 hrs, the female was skinny again so I pulled all three fish out. When I did this, I disturbed the coconut hut and moss and saw a whole bunch of eggs go floating around the tank. YAY! success!
So I left the tank there without fish....hopefully just eggs. I watched, and tried not to poke at the moss too much. To be honest, I gave up last week and figured I'd try putting them back in again soon. Yesterday I did a double-take, though, because I saw fry!
I have no idea how many are in there, but every time I look at the tank I see between 4 and 6 right off the bat. Hopefully they're not too fragile. They are really the weirdest fry I've seen....extremely white and active, and they have a hair-fine long whisker on each side of their face that make them nearly as wide as they are long.
