My husband purchased a group of 8 regular fin brown Ancistrus
Temmenickii during his trip to the catfish convention in Baltimore last october.
He graciously gave me a pair so I could see what I could do with them. I placed
the pair in a 10 gallon tank heated to 78 degrees with a PH of 7.5. There were
also a couple pairs of guppies in the tank, so I just added a couple cones and
let nature take it's course.
The pair were fed a diet of algae wafers, shrimp pellets, earthworm
pellets, and cucumbers. I noticed the female was getting heavy with eggs and the
male was flapping his fins and showing off for her, trying to get her into the
cone. Finally on january 2nd when I checked the cone the male was in there
fanning a spawn of what looked like over 50 eggs. They were only about 1/8th
inch in size and were amber in color. On january 5th the eggs hatched and the
cone was alive with little A. temmenickii.
About 3 days after the eggs hatched I chased the male out of the
cone and moved it along with the fry to a grow-out tank. I then moved the fry
out of the cone and the tank was covered by about 50 fry. I fed them a diet of
shrimp pellets, earthworm pellets, and cucumbers. Algae wafers were also added.
These plecos are easy to spawn and care for. They are also very
fast growers. I would recommend them to anyone desiring to try spawing a fish
from the YATFS difficult list.