Loaches Online Forum

Any reports of Lepidocephalichthys guntea being captive bred before?

I had them breed multiple times for me this year. Triggers seemed to be increase in temp and current. Lots of cover as well.

Small number of fry survived with adults.

Congratulations! I have not heard of any captive spawning. Do you have any pics of the fry?

Yes, but haven't figured out how to upload them.

Hints?

Very nice! Take lots of pics to document the occasion.

Use Photobucket to upload it and insert it on the forum with the tags. There's a button on the post formatting toolbar.

Please upload pics. I would love to see it.

Looking forward to photos. Congratulations.

I re-homed the spawning adults and remaining fry to another hobbyist in the local aquarium club last Saturday. Just found more very small fry zipping around on the bottom of their tank. Might be "residual" gunteas, or they could be the Pangio sp. that were also in the tank. Hoping it's the kuhlii loaches.

Absolutely fantastic. Thanks for sharing and posting pictures.

Have you had these fish long? What do you think brought about the spawn?

I had them for about 3 months before I found the first fry earlier this year. I purchased them as adults, sexing out a good ratio of males to females, (I used pectoral fin differences to sex them and apparently was pretty accurate). They were the only fish in their tank, and had a lot of cover provided by a concave rock covered by a very large spawning mop. Filtration was with a sponge filter. I initially cycled them at 75 degrees F for a few weeks, then performed a large water change using warmer tap water and plugged the heater in to maintain a temp of 81 F. I also added a back filter to increase the current in the tank for a few days. I fed them very well on live blackworms, frozen bloodwroms, pellets and Repashy, and the adults were quite robust. They were very shy though, so I never got any good pictures of them. They were very active at night, and I am assuming that is when the spawning activity occurred. Unfortunately I never witnessed it, and never found any eggs. The fry were very small, (I think they might initially be pelagic-I have video of what might be a fry in the tank, and I saw something similar when I spawned Sewellia lineolata) and they first appeared on the glass as in the pictures above. They eventually settled on the bottom. Adults did not seem to bother them and multiple spawns were raised together. Fun project!

Absolutely fantastic. So these were not accidently spawned? You really worked hard on them. Amazing! I bet it feels great to have them.