How Do Plecos Breed

They are egg layers and in the wild they generally spawn in caves laying large volumes of eggs on flat surfaces. The easiest way to breed these fish is to remove them from the community tank and place the pair in their own breeding tank which contains plenty of caves formed from piping or plant pots. On top of the gravel i lay a piece of slate which just covers half the gravel.

malawi aquarium beleuchtung marbled angelfish marine angelfish marble hatchet malawi aquarium 240l malawi fish majestic angel reef safe marine angelfish angie

As fry they are known for being demanding eaters requiring large amounts of protein.

How do plecos breed. Though many claim to breed plecos at a wide variety of temperatures i have found that breeding them at 77 78 degrees works best. Nor are several others that often get called common. To reiterate the breeding of the plecos is not as easy as some other species and therefore do not lose hope if your plecos don t seem to be mating.

The top is thrown away and the bottom is filled to just below the rim with a small aquarium gravel. Zebra pleco breeding is something that s done very often in captivity. To replicate this you may want to make your tank slightly cooler than normal.

The true common pleco is by code l021 pterygoplichthys pardalis which do not get as large about 10 to 12 in a medium sized tank and do well in a community tank unlikely to eat your other fish. In the wild these fish spawn in the warm rainy season. Hypostomus plecostomus is often called common pleco but it isn t.

All you need is a boy and a girl a cave and some barry white. How to breed plecos the easy way. What is known is that it is very difficult to breed them in captivity.

Secondly breeding of this species usually occurs in the cooler winter months during the amazon s rainy season. It s a fairly straightforward process that you can usually trigger with a few simple water changes. The fish burrow themselves under the slate and create a small covered spawning pit to their own specifications.

The fry starts swimming in about a week s time. The male will then guard the cave until the eggs have hatched. Our experience is that the bristlenose plecos generally leave java fern java moss and bolbitis fern alone so using small groups of plants for security and natural look works well.

Michael s fish room method for breeding plecos. If they do breed in a community tank you can move the eggs along with whatever they are attached to to another tank. The entrances to the caves should be slightly larger then the fish if too large an entrance the pleco may ignore it.

Once the eggs hatch the fry start appearing and at that time they can be fed baby fish food and algae powder.