how old for bushy noses to breed...

[Magnum Man]

I have a male, and female bushy nose, in the same tank... both super reds... both were raised in different tanks, and are around 2 years or a bit more in age... a couple months ago, they got condensed into the same tank, with a lot of larger caves, from the previous set up... they both go in and out of the caves, and don't fight at all, but also don't seem interested in each other at all... I was thinking I read somewhere, that 4 years old was a magic number... what say you successful pleco breeders???

 

[Back in the fold]

Whatever happened to that guy from California that was going to go whole hog on pleco breeding ? Anyway , @TwoTankAmin is the oracle here on this topic .

 

[Magnum Man]

AI say's this...

 

[Magnum Man]

mine are both 4 inches, or a little over, and right now the female is pretty thick, as can be vaguely seen in the top picture here ...
these are the female, pictures difficult at night, due to the reflections in the front glass

 

[GaryE]

My standard, probably Ancistrus cirrhosus golds (but who knows - hybrids? Another species?) ones breed well before a year. I don't try to keep them and thought I'd given them all away a number of times, but tiny ones always appear. My record keeping is bad because I don't want this fish.
But they do grow on you, and they do grow.

 

[ghyti]

When the males are old enough to grow their bristles they are old enough to spawn.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

They spawn young. I had several unwanted spawns in grow tanks, I kept thinking they had not been froing enough and the next thing I know I had eggs. When Kensfish was selling the ATU sponge replacements ring for the cross, this made it possibke for them to swim down thr uplift tube and inth the plastic skeleton.

On the other hand, the Hypancistrus L173 took several years to hit sexual maturity. I thought it was in the range of 4 years maybe a bit more. They grow very slowly.

 

[Magnum Man]

this is my male, at the back of his cave... I don't see any eggs yet...

 

[Magnum Man]

both of these fish are sharing a cave... maybe a good thing???

 

[ghyti]

The cave looks pretty big to me. My Bristlenose like a cave small enough that they can reach the sides with their pectoral fins so they can lock themselves in and can;t be pulled out. Just big enough to squeeze them both in seems to work pretty good.

 

[Magnum Man]

admittedly so, they were cichlid caves previously...