TwoTankAmin
Fish Connoisseur
I should have mentioned this in my post above. In order to do a dry rainy season for my Xingu plecos I basically took three months to raise the tank water temp to 92F and TDS to the 175 ppm range at the end of the 3 month build up of the dry season. I chose that range because my tap would serve as the rainy season and it has a TDS of 83 ppm, I would do the onset of the rainy season to conincide with on oncoming storm to also gain the advantage of the barometric pressure drop.
To do the onset of the rainy I would do a large water change- about 60% with my tap water at about 75F. I did not do this slowly either because in the wild the rains combined with the melt water from the Andes is pretty cool. I would unplug the heater and reset it to 80F and at the end of the water change the tank temp was about 80.
Within the next 24-36 hourse I repeated this but with a bit less water changed. I left the heater plugged in at about 82. The water would drop into the mid 70s before the heater brought it back to 82. It did not kill the fish. it did not kill the fry that might still be in the breeder tank either.
I have to confess that I did not have to do this dry/rainy very often. I am very fortunate in how many of my fish bred in my well water with no helo or encouragnement from me. This went beyond plecos to include angels, discus, corys, Cherry barbs, several danios, a couple of Pseudomugil rainbows, Pseudocrenilabrus nicholsi and I even got surprise fry from some threadfin rainbows I had temporarily parked in a bristlenose grow tank. I usually tell people that my well water contains a natural fish aphrodisiac. It also seems to work for my Neocaridina davidi both red and blue varieties.
Here is another good story from my tanks. I had a 40B withch held a pair of adult discus, a school of rummy nose corys and 5 Hypancistrus L450 I was growing out to spawn. I was working on another tank in the room and I glanced over at thr 40 and saw one of the discus stuck to the intake of an Aquaclear. I knew that ws not right and I went over to the tank. When I lifted the lid I caould almost feel the steam coming up. the water was about 105F. The other dead discus was starting to rot at the surface yunder the floating plants. Also imiced in with the floating plants were mush balls which used to be the tetras. The cause was one of the two heaters in the tank got stuck full on.
But when I looked into the caves I had put in for the L450s, all of them were hunkered down but very much alive. I immediately removed the dead fish and di a large water change to get the temp down into the 80s. two weeks later the L450s spawned for the first time. I sold the breeding group about 10 years later along wwith the most recent fry from them.
I did have a similar geater failure some years later which wiped out my original breeding group of 10 L236 along with about 30 or so fry. The bellies of the adults had exploded om several of them. Fortunately I had sent 26 larged offspiring to a friend to sell and i had another 23 in a grow tank. I was able to create a new breeding group from those 23 offsping. This second boiling is what started me buying heater controllers for all my pleco breeding tanks.
To do the onset of the rainy I would do a large water change- about 60% with my tap water at about 75F. I did not do this slowly either because in the wild the rains combined with the melt water from the Andes is pretty cool. I would unplug the heater and reset it to 80F and at the end of the water change the tank temp was about 80.
Within the next 24-36 hourse I repeated this but with a bit less water changed. I left the heater plugged in at about 82. The water would drop into the mid 70s before the heater brought it back to 82. It did not kill the fish. it did not kill the fry that might still be in the breeder tank either.
I have to confess that I did not have to do this dry/rainy very often. I am very fortunate in how many of my fish bred in my well water with no helo or encouragnement from me. This went beyond plecos to include angels, discus, corys, Cherry barbs, several danios, a couple of Pseudomugil rainbows, Pseudocrenilabrus nicholsi and I even got surprise fry from some threadfin rainbows I had temporarily parked in a bristlenose grow tank. I usually tell people that my well water contains a natural fish aphrodisiac. It also seems to work for my Neocaridina davidi both red and blue varieties.
Here is another good story from my tanks. I had a 40B withch held a pair of adult discus, a school of rummy nose corys and 5 Hypancistrus L450 I was growing out to spawn. I was working on another tank in the room and I glanced over at thr 40 and saw one of the discus stuck to the intake of an Aquaclear. I knew that ws not right and I went over to the tank. When I lifted the lid I caould almost feel the steam coming up. the water was about 105F. The other dead discus was starting to rot at the surface yunder the floating plants. Also imiced in with the floating plants were mush balls which used to be the tetras. The cause was one of the two heaters in the tank got stuck full on.
But when I looked into the caves I had put in for the L450s, all of them were hunkered down but very much alive. I immediately removed the dead fish and di a large water change to get the temp down into the 80s. two weeks later the L450s spawned for the first time. I sold the breeding group about 10 years later along wwith the most recent fry from them.
I did have a similar geater failure some years later which wiped out my original breeding group of 10 L236 along with about 30 or so fry. The bellies of the adults had exploded om several of them. Fortunately I had sent 26 larged offspiring to a friend to sell and i had another 23 in a grow tank. I was able to create a new breeding group from those 23 offsping. This second boiling is what started me buying heater controllers for all my pleco breeding tanks.
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