L134 Peckoltia Compta

All assigned numbers: L134

Name: Peckoltia Compta

Common Names: Leopard Frog Pleco

Location: Brazil: Pará, Rio Tapajós (Pimental)

Photos:






Appearance:

Compatibility: Mainly peaceful but can be a little territorial, this can be combated by providing plenty of hiding places and not over crowding.

Sexing and Breeding: Males develop odontodes on the front pectoral fins whereas females don't. Females are wider across the girth which is easier to see when viewed from above. Breeding isn't too difficult, the water needs to be more on the soft side with a max ph of 6.5. Leopard Frogs are cave spawners.

Diet:An omnivore that leans towards a meatier diet, so the main diet should consist of meaty foods such as frozen foods (tubifex, mosquito larvae, blood worms, artemia), dry foods (freeze-dried foods, flakes, granules), carnivore sinking pellets, and occasionally some small pieces of shrimp, mussels or fish fillet. Once acclimatized, it may also accept vegetable matter such as algae/spirulina disks and fresh vegetables (lettuce, zucchini/courgette, eggplant/aubergine, capsicum, carrot, peas, preboiled spinach).

Water parameters: Fairly easy going, ph should be between 6 and 7.5. The temp should be between 24-28c

Max Size: 4.4in

Bred by: windy, lealea, Scrapman53, thegeeman, Joby, psionic001

Breeding Log:See below, for questions and comments please refer to the original threads L134 Breeding Log + A brief guide to breeding L134's

Additional Comments:

L134

Tank set up



Size 20: gallon long

Substrate: Mainly bare, did have some sand in there but gets syphoned up with water changes

Decor: Slate caves, bogwood

Filtration: Tetratec EX600 external filter with spray bar, sponge filter

Heating: 150 watt heater set at 26 degrees

Maintenance: daily 10-25% with room temperature water from butts containing bogwood

Tankmates: None at present, used to have swordtail juvies in with them but they bothered the fry


The Fish

One male approx 3" total length plus 2 females one same size as the male the other is a little smaller. They have been in the set up since August last year. They are believed to be wild caught and had not spawned for their previous owner in the 6 months he'd had them. They are fed on Tetra prima, bloodworm flake, brineshrimp flake with garlic, frozen foods and occasional fresh veggies and algae wafers.

Spawning

I didn't try and trigger a spawning, just left them to it really. The females were pretty gravid when they arrived. The male got very hairy and one day I noticed he had the larger female trapped in his cave. They remained that way for two days and when she left a lot slimmer I could see a small pile of eggs in the back of the cave being fiercly potected by dad.



A few eggs were fanned out of the cave so I put them into a breeding trap under the outflow of the spray bar to keep them moving and they hatched a few days later.



Slowly but surely the others came out of the cave but died within hours of leaving. I was worried a film had built up on the tank floor so added a nice layer of sand but still they continued to die. I got so frustrated finding little stripey bodies everyday and not knowing what to do :cry: The three in the breeding trap continued to thrive.



Very soon I had lost all but 4 fry (25 eggs in total), 3 in the trap and one that managed to survive in the main tank.

2 months later the male spawned again but this time with the smaller female. The eggs however never fertilized. He spawned again 2 weeks later with the larger female again after a 5 day trapping and another good batch of eggs were laid. After a week we had the same problem, fries leaving the cave and dying. I hastily made a fry saver complete with its own filter for water movement which was designed by Russell aka SmithRC and popped the cave complete with male and fry in.



After this I didn't lose another fry. The male spawned with the larger female again a month later and I only lost 3 fry out of this and now have 27 healthy juvies :woohoo:

The fry are moved to their own grow-out tank set up exactly the same as the breeding tank at 2 months old.



Feeding the fry

The fry are fed a mixture of what the adults eat crushed down with a pestel and mortar :yes: I feed at least 3 or 4 times a day small amounts and remove the waste regularly with a turkey baster to keep the fry saver clean

L134 Breeding video

I haven't put much into the forum over the past while, so thought I'd put this together for you guys. Hope you like.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuKBxZeDiYk"]YouTube- L134s Breeding Video.avi[/ame]

To my surprise I stumbled across a huge abundance of information on caring for and breeding plecos when I found plecofanatics.com in 2006. I had kept bristlenose in a community tank when I was a kid but this was another whole level above the information that was available to me as a kid 22 years before. A new world of fish keeping was now at my fingertips and I spent the next 2 months reading almost every post there was on breeding and caring for plecos. Before the internet I would have been lucky to find a book with a handful of pages on breeding bristlenose, but now I was in contact with hundreds of people, breeding hundreds of different types of plecos, all over the world. This was great.

What an amazing looking fish is the L134. It was love at first sight, and when I discovered that they could be bred in captivity, I started to look for my first colony.

On December 12th 2006 I purchased 7 L134s from a bloke who had them in a large and deep 8 foot tank. I collected them from his house and when I first saw them I was surprised as they were the biggest fattest L134s I’d ever seen. They were so fat that when they rested on the bottom of the tank they teetered on their bellies.

On the December 30th 2006 I started up the breeding tank with the aim of having a spawn in no time at all. Boy was I mistaken.

After having read so much I thought it would be a cinch. Just give them optimum conditions and they will breed. I’d read everything there was to read, including the translations from a number of german articles, so how hard could this be?.

Here’s what I did... I initially set them up in a bare bottom tank with a few D shaped caves and some Anubis planted on driftwood. I dutifully supplied them with water changes every second day, and RO water when required (to simulate a rainy season). I fed them well and monitored the tank parameters obsessively. I even kept an excel spreadsheet of daily variables for Temp, TDS, Water change amount, RO water, PH, Black Water Extract (an additive) and even what I fed them each day.

And the wait began....... And I waited and waited.... And waited some more.... Still dutifully obsessing over my fish....

I added river rocks.... 3 months later I removed them.
The tank needed substrate.... then I removed it too.
The caves needed to be changed so I tried different shapes. I built slate caves and cut bamboo caves...
Plants..... was I using the wrong plants? Should they have plants at all?
Music? Believe it or not I played them a thunderstorm soundtrack...
I covered the tank with towels and kept the lights off. I put the lights on timers.
I tried rainy season after rainy season. Long ones, short ones, soft ones, big floods and cold rivers, no flow and high flow.
Power heads on, power heads off. Lights on, lights off
Heaters on heaters off.
And on and on and on it went.....
I tried everything!!!!!

And guess what happened after more than 12 months of work work work?..... NOTHING..... Arghhhhhh....

So herein lies the key to how I managed to spawn my L134s..... I gave up (well not completely, but mostly), and in doing so, I gave my fish the rest and peace they need.

I stopped the daily or weekly water change, I stopped using RO water, I stopped testing for ammo, nitrates, nitrites and the like. I fed them mostly Hikari algae wafers and only occasionally some frozen foods. I stopped obsessing.

And guess what happened? In February 2008 after just 3 or 4 weeks of leaving my fish alone I noticed that one of the males was vigorously fanning his tail at the entrance of the cave. I grabbed a torch and had a peek and there was a very agitated L134 sitting on a bunch of eggs. Over the next 5 months I had another 4 or 5 spawns about a month apart for each. I could tell you what the water parameters were at the time, TDS 100ppm, Temp 27°C, PH 6.5, but I really don’t think that the parameters are too important.

What is clearly important to me, is that the fish need some time to themselves and the less interference with the tank the better.

So here’s a brief guide to breeding L134s and the parameters that my tank had during most of these spawns.
Temp about 27°C, TDS about 100PPM, PH 6.5
Keep lights off.
Feed lots for a week.
Do a 30% water change
And leave them alone.

If nothing happens, then feed them lots for 3 weeks, then do a 30% water change and leave them alone.


Hope this helps those who are trying to breed these fish. Be patient and give your fish the space they need.


Next lesson, “Don’t shine torches in cavesâ€



Any questions, just ask.

best

Matt



Introducing the L134 to their tank on day one.
I used some silicone airline to slowly drip tank water and acclimatise them.




Big fat L134s




Trying different caves




This young fry had a problem with its yolk sac. It later died as the sac kept expanding.
It’s the only fry that has died after leaving the care of the father.




A sibling of the fry above. This one has just absorbed the yolk sac.




Juveniles at about 6-8 weeks




Juveniles 9-10 months old




Female L134 with nice patterns.