Hello need some Help Please!

Have have a pair of dwarf bristlenose pleco(do not know their numbers)- but the male is black/brown and the female is calico. Yesterday I noticed that the male was laying on top of about 20+ very orange coloured eggs and being a good Dad-to-B fanning them tirelessly! I never planned on this happening in fact I thought the pH (7.4) too high to even conceive of this occasion :o I am very excited though at the thought of little fry, but am concerned because they are in a tank with guppies- not aggressive but rather (omnivorous) and would like to know if anyone knows if the fry are in danger of being eaten by them. Are the fry born with any protection like the adults or are they very vulnerable?Also I would like to move them to a growing tank if all goes well, but I do not know when it is okay to separate them from their Dad, if I needed to move the male and eggs because of the guppies would that cause the male to not want to care for the eggs anymore?

Have only had the pair for about 10 months they were juvenile but they were able to be sexed just, when I got them and recently I moved them from a fantail Goldfish Tank to a Guppy tank to do what they do best-eat algae!
There are about 10 guppies and 2 Otocinclus in the tank and live plants.

Please Help me learn how to keep the fry if they hatch safe
Thank you

Congratulations!


Now you have two options:
1) Either you remove dad with the eggs.
I usually take dad out and place him with the cave into a 42 litre tank. Sponge filtration is good enough but wood is a must, since even the day-old free swimmers like to munch on that.

2) Or you leave them in the community tank.
I had once left them in the community tank (86 litre with many plants) and there was absolutely no problem. They all venture around the tank without any harassment from guppies, platties, corydorases.

If you wish to raise as many of them as possible, taking dad and eggs out would be a better choice.

Wish you good luck with them!

My 4ft breeding tank has albino longfin bn and guppies in it. Iv never had any problem with the guppies and bn fry. They leave pretty much alone. In fact I think they are competing which species of fish will overpopulate the tank first lol

Sorry, double post

Like mmccannon said, you have two options - depending on what you want to do/risk, you'll have to choose. I don't really know much about moving them, so I can't really say much more on the subject, but since this is your first time with eggs (right?), just a few notes:

1.) Never separate the dad from the fries, unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing. Dad is important.

2.) The fries will continue to feed on their egg yolk 3-4 days after hatching, so keep that in mind.

3.) Don't ever, ever feed them brine shrimps, blood worms or anything else with a lot of protein. Feed them vegetable matter (boiled skinless peas, zucchini, etc.) or algae, in moderation. Don't overfeed the little guys. Good news is that given the other type of fish you have are guppies, they won't really fight with your lil' ones for their food.

4.) Clean up excess organic matter. This includes both excess food (as the fries can overdose on that) and dead fries (sad, but it does happen commonly - remove them before the other fries start to feed on them).

And, er, that's all for my two cents.

Dad a.k.a "Branches" has a big beautiful new batch of eggs to care for! Yey!!!! I have moved Branches with his batch and cave of course into a little 20 L with a sponge filter, two types of wood Malaysian and another type of aquarium wood(unknown species )which have some Cabomba and Hornwort attached to it. Also a heater set at 24*C and the water is 1/4 new and 3/4 of Mom and Dad's tank water. Parameters 0ppms -check! I looked on the 11th in the cave- no eggs and last evening at about 8pm local (mountain time) when I went to feed Branches and Twigs(Mum) and check for leftover zucchini and cucumber scraps there they were and :o Sorry about the silliness and detail - I can't contain my excitement! No one here understands the joy, even just to have them breed again is a miracle! So a Big Thank you to Azedenkae, kfenk and mmccannon- your precious advice is now in practice half way around the world. Also Thank you to BNWorld and everyone's friendly willingness to share their experiences, fanatics and general BN advice fingers-crossed Eh!

Congrats and good luck with the babys

Great news, if you thought you loved BN's before just wait untill there out and about looking like little miniature of the parents

Nice work on the eggs again mate!

You will find that the males will take one or two goes at getting things right but you are well on the track at the moment.

The best thing to do now is to leave them alone, just do some small regular water changes (as it is a small tank) the fry are out and about leave dad with them for a little while as they need to eat some of his poo to get the good bacteria out of it. I would take him out after the fry have been out of the cave for about a fortnight as the tank is small and the dad will stress out a bit, plus he will be putting a high load onto the filter and the last thing you want is an ammonia spike.

I like to put some cucumber into the tank as soon as i see a baby sneak out past dad so that there is def something there for them to nibble on when they get out and algae wafers can be a bit too strong for the little ones.

Once they are big enough i would shift them back into the main tank as the 20ltr tank will quickly become too small for them unless you have an epic filter on it.

Keep up the good work, soon you will be swarmed with baby bristlenose!

Thank you Doug, jim.and, kfenk for the congrats and good vibes! Dad is busy fanning and caring I am trying not to take too many peaks as I don't want to disturb him fathering! but this time I am not sure if it was the better diet for mum and dad the eggs 40+( all I could count) are a much deeper/brighter orange/amber, and are showing poles(tails and heads I think) and seem to be developing much better. thank you for the advice, yes it is a very small tank and i do not want to the parameters to spike or create any probs. I am sooo excited and very hopeful, Mum is currently in the Goldfish tank, plumping up quickly, as goldfish are so messy and algae just thrives in their tank, she's eating veggies some but is day and night cleaning the goldys tank, very cute to watch!

That's the spirit Carolan!

Keep up the good work, and do not spare us from some photos of the wrigglers. :bounce: