I bought the pair as adults a year and one week ago.
It was once a jack dempsey juvie tank so the substrate is mostly calcium carb gravel. Lately its been royal whiptail tank and the pair of L104's were just sorta turfed in for somewhere to put them.
A few months ago I decided to put in under gravel filter on the 4ft x 1ft x 18" tank and its has 4 air risers. On the one corner though instead of a riser I hooked on a canister intake. My idea is, it takes surface debris from the top of the gravel and also pulls out bulk mulm from under the ugf. I do still gravel vac parts of the tank, just not quite as often.
My water is rainwater with a ph of about 6, the calc carb can pull it up to about 7 but not much higher as the wood in there does pull ph down a little.
I do about 20% wc once a week. There is also an internal power filter blowing current up to the further end and pulling debris back toward the canister intake.
Temp is set on 24C but its not really working atm since sometimes in summer its getting up near 30C on a stinking hot day. I have put in an evap cooler to blow on the tank and its tends to keep the water around 26 to 28C (79F-82F).
Don't know if its significant or not but the tank is in my laundry which I seldom visit unless washing or tending fish, so largely they are undisturbed.
I keep the tank light off during the day and only put it on for a few hours at night to tend tanks and let the plants get a bit of light.
Recently the royal whiptails had a double spawn so I am not sure if that maybe put something in the water to trigger off the L104's to breed.
I have a large frysaver up one end now full of whiptail fry and some pepperment fry which I hatched in an egg tumbler in that tank.
Food is continental cucumber every second day, couple of hikari algae wafers to feed 10 royal whips and the pair of L104's, and a good sprinkling of Sera flora flake daily. Not often but sometimes a bit of NewLifeSpectrum or shrimp pellets might be added and maybe even a tab of Vilforma.
I do know royal whips love live blackworm but its hard to get here and I always worry I might bloat something so they don't get it.
Driftwood is nothing special but I have bits of anubias tied to most bits.
The preferred caves are those round terracotta log looking ones with an opening of about 2.5cm or about an inch.
There has been very little rain or storm activity lately but the barometer did drop a bit about a week ago so perhaps that together with their usual rainwater change got them going.
Prior to now, they have trapped together in the log for over a week sometimes but nothing ever came of it. I gave up looking, but just noted that she still went in the log from time to time.
It was only when I noticed one fry kicked out last night that I decided to empty the log to find 8 more fry. Fantastic surprise. :woohoo:
