PlanetCatfish.com

Hi

I bought a Male Bristlenose yestarday for the LFS i already have a Female, And was after some help on trying to get them breeding or do i just leave them and let nature take its course?? i have a 3ft planted tank with lots of caves for them, i have been told they need caves to spawn, my tank readings are below

PH 7
GH 120
KH 80
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 20
Temp 26

do i need to up the Temp or Down it or is it ok???
is the PH, GH, KH, ok?????

any help would be great

thanks

Sounds like a pretty good setup to me. The cave that the male breeds in needs to be pretty tight fit. The male and female obviously needs to fit in there, but at least the entrance should be such that the male can more or less cover it. I've used 32mm PVC pipes, upside-down terracotta saucers (the ones used for plant-pots) and the male dug his own cave under a flat piece of slate before I built dedicated caves. Most successfull has been the terracotta saucer, really.

Another setup I have, the male has been using a bamboo cave formed by cutting a piece of bamboo so that one of the "segments" form a end-cap on a piece that is about 15 cm/6" in length.

Tank parameters and temperature seems about right (in my experience, chemistry and temperature is not terribly important, as long as the temperature isn't too much above 26'C). Leave everything as is (aside from perhaps adding/modifying a cave somewhere) for a couple of weeks to see what happens. If no result, try a large-ish cooler-water change (drop temp in tank to maybe 23 or so degrees and let it warm up again).

There's been hundreds of posts on this subject, so you may be able to find some other useful info if you use the forum search option (or just look down the list of subjects here for a few pages - there's bound to be one discussion or another in the next couple of pages).

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Mats

thank you i will make a cave with a little entrance and see what happens.

thanks

MatsP wrote:
If no result, try a large-ish cooler-water change (drop temp in tank to maybe 23 or so degrees and let it warm up again).

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Mats

Is it ok to drop the temp from 26 to 23 in one step? (a large cooler water change)

I've dropped 2-4 degrees in one (large) water change without any noticable problem to the inhabitants of the tank. Of course, if you take a lot of water out of the tank and start filling it (relatively slowly) with cooler water, it's not an INSTANT drop in temperature. I usually do my smaller tank (Bristlenose breeding tank) in 3-4 buckets of water, which takes about 15-20 minutes from start of emptying to end of refilling. But it's a noticably quick drop indeed.

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Mats

Breeding Ancistrus is a very common question because they are considered a learning step toward breeding more exotic species. As a result, I did an online article detailing how I do it. Remember that everybody has their own way, but I think it's fairly informative.

http://www.plecobreeder.com/ancistrus.htm

Thanks,

Larry Vires