Possible Cross Breeding?

[mrmathk]

Mystery Solved! I placed the tank structure prop outside the tank and sifted the gravel. When I lifted it, there it was - the second Pleco (and some fry). Time to gift them to the students.

Thanks everybody.

 

[trash.binh91]

Mystery Solved! I placed the tank structure prop outside the tank and sifted the gravel. When I lifted it, there it was - the second Pleco (and some fry). Time to gift them to the students.

Thanks everybody.

Please dont! Your Plecostomus are Common Plecos, and will get to eventual lengths of 2 feet! Giving them to students will create misinformation and bad lives for the fish. Common plecos need gigantic tanks!

 

[seangee]

Also worth adding plecs NEED wood to graze on. I never saw any in your pics.

 

[fluttermoth]

It's extremely unlikely that these are common plecs. Common plecs wouldn't breed at such a small size and, in fact, breeding is virtually unknown in captivity.

They're almost certainly a bristlenose species, but we'd need to see some close up pictures, especially of the belly and dorsal fin, before we could give any kind of positive ID.

 

[Demeter32]

Just a quick summary. The eggs are corydora eggs, females will spawn even w/o a male present though the eggs will be infertile.

The fry are bristlenose pleco fry, not common plecos. As another stated, commons will not breed in the home aquarium.

Also, I suggest you not gift those fry to your students. I highly doubt many of them have a 29gal+ set up nor the proper knowledge to care for tiny BN pleco fry. While they breed readily and easily in the home aquarium, the tiny fry are much more difficult to care for than adults. They need food available 24/7 and that is only possible in a mature tank with a decent amount of biofilm. Better to raise them up to a decent size and then give them to a petstore along with one of the adults to prevent further breeding and more work on your end.