Breeding BNs

[anewbie]

I have a male and lemon blue-eye in a community 40B; i wish they wouldn't breed; but i have a gazillion and 1 little pleco of various sizes. The nannacara hunts them but they pop out faster than he can get em - when i move in a couple of months i'll round them all up and give them to the LFS - so yea two pleco == gazillion pleco (pot optional). I will say that before i gave him a cave he went around the tank digging holes. I had to give him a cave so he would stop digging; and yea - for the past 3 years it has been his cave and everyone else knows it. The nannacara is at heart an ambush predator - he will sit just above the cave for days waiting for snacks to leave.

 

[seangee]

The new ones are pretty good tbf. I added one to one of my 5fts a month or so ago. You can control it from your phone and get alarms if the temp goes below or above your settings.

Didnt know you had to put the probes close together tho, ive got mine at either end

Let me know how it goes for reliability - specifically false alarms. I got one of the wifi ones before they added the second probe. Every now and then it gives a false alarm and stops heating. Sometimes it will go for weeks and sometimes it happens almost daily. Just cycling the power sorts it. Usually not a problem unless you are away from home over a particularly cold period and turned the heating down to save on gas costs. Fortunately the neighbour with our key was home over Christmas / new year. The app won't let you cycle power so now I have added a smart plug so I can do it myself, I have also set it to turn off for a minute every 6 hours. This has solved the issue (supplier won't exchange, says its common and his own ones do it). So I was planning to keep the old ones going until I had to replace them.

 

[AquaBarb]

Let me know how it goes for reliability - specifically false alarms. I got one of the wifi ones before they added the second probe. Every now and then it gives a false alarm and stops heating. Sometimes it will go for weeks and sometimes it happens almost daily. Just cycling the power sorts it. Usually not a problem unless you are away from home over a particularly cold period and turned the heating down to save on gas costs. Fortunately the neighbour with our key was home over Christmas / new year. The app won't let you cycle power so now I have added a smart plug so I can do it myself, I have also set it to turn off for a minute every 6 hours. This has solved the issue (supplier won't exchange, says its common and his own ones do it). So I was planning to keep the old ones going until I had to replace them.

Will do just checked and i installed it on 25 jan so its been running over 2 months now and ive had no issues so far. No false alarms.

I actually ordered the Itc-306t because i had no issues with my others and the 306a was a fair bit more dollar. But the seller i brought it off messaged back to say Inkbird was no longer doing the .T. and would upgrade me with the .A. for same price. So i had a good deal tbf

 

[seangee]

Don't know for sure which tank will be her forever home, or what will become of this tank, or even if she will get a boyfriend. But if she is going to stay in here we seem to be closer to a compromise on the decor (as long as I accept that most of the compromising has to come from me )

The cave in the front is hers. However the pot with the anubias immediately behind her has to be shoved towards the front as she absoultely needs a private verandah. She also needs the sunken bit at the mouth of the cave for sunning herself, its also quite useful for me as somewhere to place the food so she does not have to destroy the vegetation to find it. The hollowed out bit beneath the cave is also not negotiable - she usually sleeps inside or on top of the cave but sometimes she just needs to get away from it all.
I never cleaned up behind her today and as you can see there is not too much hygrophila that needs replanting. I do need to sort out the substrate behind her home / garden as she had to drag the potted anubius a long way to get it where she wanted and buried the ludwigia along the way.
I did pop into the LFS today to see if anyone had dropped off a suitably sized boy that needed a home - but nobody had. I also managed not to buy anything out of the tank full of sids. They were tiny, excessively skinny (skinny disease or recovering from worms) and ridiculously over priced IMO

 

[seangee]

Found her! No idea why I went to the trouble of buying caves

On a more serious note if anyone has a breeding size male they are looking to re-home in the Thames Valley area give me a shout. Colour not important as Billy was a brown wildtype so that is all I was expecting. All the shops around here only have tiny ones.

 

[anewbie]

Found her! No idea why I went to the trouble of buying caves
View attachment 315630
On a more serious note if anyone has a breeding size male they are looking to re-home in the Thames Valley area give me a shout. Colour not important as Billy was a brown wildtype so that is all I was expecting. All the shops around here only have tiny ones.

No clue what you are trying to say about the cave; female bn don't use caves; only males. If you are trying to say you wasted money buying a cave for a female bn pleco - well of course - you have to understand the species behavior before such purchases. Now many dwarf female cichild will use a 'hidden' area to lay eggs include; but not exclusively; caves but that is another matter.

 

[seangee]

No clue what you are trying to say about the cave; female bn don't use caves; only males. If you are trying to say you wasted money buying a cave for a female bn pleco - well of course - you have to understand the species behavior before such purchases. Now many dwarf female cichild will use a 'hidden' area to lay eggs include; but not exclusively; caves but that is another matter.

If you read the thread ...
I got her as a potential mate for my 19 year old male as I knew he would not go on forever. I introduced a selection of caves to the QT in readiness of their introduction as I planned to move him into the QT. Unfortunately he died before they actually met, at his age I have to assume it was natural causes. She is still in the process of redecorating her new home
For the time being she will continue to live in the 20G "QT" as I would not expect to see very much of her in the 50G pictured in my signature

 

[anewbie]

fyi: in my heavily planted 120 and 40B i frequently see my female(s) lemon blue-eye bn; attached are the 120 and 40B:



and a predator: