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This morning, while working in the fish room, I noticed one of my female Protomelas steveni Taiwan Reefs had a couple of babies trying to get back into her mouth. The first impression was that these were really big babies. Closer examination revealed she had released 8 baby multipunctatus catfish abou 1/4" long.

The female Taiwan Reef is at least 2 years old and about 3 to 3 1/2". She is the oldest of a working group of 7 females and one 5" male. The cuckoo breeding took place in a 180 US Gallon tank full of peacocks, haps and protomelas species. The was only a single pair of multipunctatus in this tank. Water temp is 78 degrees F, Ph is 8.0, GH 12, Kh 14. Tank is now receiving 16 hours of light per day. Substrate is sand. Lots of rockwork and cover.

Food consisted of a rotation of the following:frozen mysis shrimp, frozen brine shrimp and frozen krill; freeze dried plankton;Cichlid Lovers super flake, spirulina plus flake, plankton-krill-shrimp flakes and micro color pellets. Fresh romaine lettuce leafs, par boiled zuchinni slices and frozen, chopped green beans.

I assume they can be raised on the same foods I feed the peacock fry, live microworms, frozen baby brine shrimp, powered flake food and cyclopezee. Does anyone have any suggestions or comments on this diet.

I have been breeding and rearing bushy nosed, albino plecos for a while but this is my first Synodontis breeding and it is exciting. I currently maintain a fish room (my wife continues to insist on calling it our home VBG) with 22 tanks totaling about 1100 gallons set up with Malawi, Tanganikan and Victorian cichlids so the free multipunctatus will we welcomed. I can't wait to try and duplicate this breeding.

congradulations on your spawn. I hope you are able to duplicate your efforts. there are not many people spawning these little babies in the U S at this time.

ken walker

Thanks. Duplication will be tell the tale. Once could be a fluke, but if the pair gets busy again then I may be able to raise a number of these little guys.

It will take a number of repeat performances since the size of the broods is small. I got 8 but, I've read 5 or 6 is pretty common. Fortunately I have 7 females in the Ptotomelas steveni Taiwan Reef group they chuckold so there will be lots of opportunities for the Multis to butt in and spawn.

Read this thread

The best foods I found for them was lots and lots of newly hatched brine shrimp. When full they should literally look like a little round ball with fins! Even with heavy feedings like this, they'll be searching for food 8 hours (or less) later.

Congrats on your spawn.

Thanks, Paul. I fed them a blend of live microworms, finely powdered cyclopezee and baby brine shrimp. They appeared to pig out, little round balls for bellies like you discribed.

They are quite active. I guess they are a lot more advanced than a baby cichlid when it is released. They are able to take much larger food without a problem.

Any idea how long the female will take between spawns or is she ready to go whenever there is a suitable spawn to interupt?

Hey jim, any chance on pics of your babies?

Congrats. Seems there's going to be a bunch of s. multi's appearing in Canada and the US ( my babies are 11days old now ).

Good luck.

JimLynchAZ Wrote:

Any idea how long the female will take between spawns or is she ready to go whenever there is a suitable spawn to interupt?

Properly conditioned, they will spawn the following day! Read my reply in the linked thread. Particularly about the host fish. Malawians do tend to get "wise" over a relatively short period of time.

Good luck, keep us posted.

I couldn't figure out how to embed the picture of the baby multipunctatus in this e-mail but, here they are on my web page. They are two days post release here.

http://imageevent.com/jimlynchaz/babysy ... ctatus?n=0