Bristlenose Pleck breeding

Hello there. In my spare time i like to breed fish. I am a huge hobbiest with over 5 years of fish keeping knowledge. I currently work at a fidh store so i can gain more knowledge so that I can open up a small breeding business. Anyway lets get onto this posts topis. Todays topic is about me breeding my Bristlenose Plecos.

For those that dont know what a pleco is, they are basically an algae eater. They can come in many different colours, patterns and sizes.

I have been breeding my bristlnose plecos for about 2 months or so now and they are such a good fish for beginners to breed. When I was choosing my breeding pair I looked for some specific traits.

For the males they had to have very long bristles. The longer the better as the females are more attracted to them. For the females just one that has a nice pattern is all that is needed. Some people say that you should have a female that is larger than the male. Personally I use a smaller female as it is easier for the male to trap the female in the cave for her to lay the eggs.

Males tend to be quite lazy so if you want the most success with the fry surviving then I suggest you invest in a powerhead. This creates current in the water and basically does the job of the male so he can just guard the eggs from predators.

Once the eggs have been laid it takes about 1 week until you start to see wrigglers but the small fry wont move out of the cave until they are about 4 weeks old. Once this happens feed them courgette. Plecos main diet is wood and plants. So giving them courgette is a great source for them. It also creates less waste within the water than algae wafers. If you want to use algae wafers then i suggest hugo kamishi algae wafers. These are by far the best and they are a personal favourite. By feeding the new fry courgette, once thin slice a day, they will almost triple their size in 2-3 weeks. This then puts them to selling size. To get them larger than around the 1" mark. It will take about another six weeks so its best to sell them small as it gives the most profit.

My next fish post will be about my convict cichlids. I hope you have learn something by reading this and ill see you again in the next post.