Ancistrus, called "sticky" or "suction cup" for its appearance, easily adapts to life in any water. Breeding this beautiful catfish is available even for novice aquarists. The main thing is to have a good pair and a separate aquarium equipped for spawning.
Preparing fish for spawning
Common ancistrus ripens early - with proper maintenance and good feeding, they can give birth to offspring as early as 10-12 months. Failure to breed this unpretentious fish most often occurs due to the fact that it is treated like a nurse or aquarium cleaner. The fish eats vegetation with pleasure, but is not a vegetarian. Ancistrus is omnivorous and should be considered when feeding it. Keeping a catfish exclusively on bottom feed can lead to its starvation if during feeding the feed is eaten by other fish, not having time to sink to the bottom.
When preparing ancistrus catfish for spawning, you should increase the amount of meat food. It is optimal to give granules with 50% protein content. Within 1-2 weeks with such feeding, the females will collect eggs, and the males will accumulate reserves for painless starvation for the period of caviar care.
Ancistrus male from the female is distinguished by the presence of outgrowths on the snout. Females may have only a few setae on the upper lip.
Shelter preparation
Provide the ancistrus with a suitable nest. Despite the fact that catfish can spawn in any shelter, and sometimes even in a "bare" aquarium, to get more fry at the right time for you, you can only prepare the appropriate "cave". Due to the nature of fertilization of eggs, this shelter should not be too spacious. But even in a very narrow nest, the male will find it inconvenient to handle the clutch, and he can throw it away. Thus, catfish should be bred in a shelter, the length of which is twice the length of the male. In this case, the width of the nest should be equal to the width of the male with an extended pectoral fin, the height - to the height of the male with a raised dorsal fin.
A closed end opaque plastic tube can be used as a socket, but ceramic sockets are preferred.
Water
Catfish reproduce well in both soft and hard water. It is important that it is fresh, oxygenated and free of ammonium and nitrite. The volume of water for a couple of ancistrus is 40 liters. To provoke spawning, fill the aquarium by a third with the water in which the fish have lived until now. Fill the remaining two-thirds with dechlorinated fresh water after planting the fish. The water temperature is 26-28 ° C.
Usually spawning occurs on the first day. The caviar is glued in the far upper corner of the nest.
A closed end opaque plastic tube can be used as a socket, but ceramic sockets are preferred.
The larvae hatch after 4-5 days, and after another 3 days, when the yolk sac dissolves, the fry should be fed. When the fry reach a length of 3 cm, the water temperature in the aquarium is reduced to 24-26 ° C.
