Synodontis Breeding Age

[DogWalker]

At feeding time today a holding yellow lab seemed to decide it'd had enough of going without food, and attempted to ingest some NLS pellets. It then suddenly looked as if it was about to upchuck, and before my eyes BLAAAAGHH! out plops the fattest lone little Synodontis fry I've seen!

A (mediocre) shot of the little guy afterwards, finding his bearings in the rockwork.


Now this was neet enough to see, but raisesd a question or two for me. I've often heard it said that Synodontis must be very mature, as in 4+ years, before they will start to breed. We determined some time ago that these are grandiops, not multipunctatus (but so very likely are many of the fish being kept as S. multipunctatus in the hobby). Since a mishap with my w/c breeding group several months ago I have only one fish left from that group. The oldest ones that I've bred and kept otherwise are about 20 months old now. So at least one of the parents (not counting the lab ) is less than 2 years old. Perhaps this is down to them being S. grandiops? Or perhaps one of the parents is indeed the surviving w/c fish and it is the fish of that gender only (not both) that takes a long time to mature sexually? ... not sure, but either way one or both parents are under 2 yrs old. I welcome your thoughts and experience on these questions.

[Birger]

You may have yours in good conditions and they have developed faster than most, but what I think is in many fish the males are ready to go before the females which often take longer to develop, your more mature fish could be a female.

Birger

[andywoolloo]

congrats on the syno fry! what a lovely thing to throw up, so to speak!

[DogWalker]

You may have yours in good conditions and they have developed faster than most, but what I think is in many fish the males are ready to go before the females which often take longer to develop, your more mature fish could be a female.

Birger

Hi Birger, thanks again for responding. I do like to think I keep all my fish in good conditions, but then so do most people who have stuck with the hobby for any number of years... My working assumption is exactly what you suggest - the surviving w/c is female and males mature faster... To test this out I could probably remove her (I think I can still tell which of them 'she' is) and see if any more breeding happens anytime soon. I'll think on that.

Andy, thanks. I've stripped them out before and typically gotten half a dozen to fourteen or so, depending how early I strip the c i c h l i d, but this was the first time I've actually witnessed them spit. I can't be sure this was the only one as others may have been spit beforehand, but by the size of that little guy's belly it looked like it could have eaten a whole clutch of c i c h l i d eggs plus half a dozen siblings of its own! I'm sure other 'spittings' have been in larger numbers based on the number of similar sized fry I used to find.