Successful LDA72 Spawning!!!

I am pleased to announce that I have successfully spawned LDA72's, I could not find any other articles relating to LDA72's so are unable to compare, so here are the details:-

I purchased from a Florida Importer a trio of wild LDA72's in January 2012, still not sure it is a trio as it appears to be one female, one male and one juvenile male??

I have them in a 40 Gallon Tank with a Fluval 306 & Marineland Bio Filter as backup.

I experimented with the temperature but found they preferred 72-74 and flourish with cold water changes of 30% dropping the temperature down to 68 for a brief while.

The tank is certainly not a show tank I have bog wood and a large piece of driftwood some rock and a large triangle cave, the water always looks discolored but that is part to do with the low light.

I have fed them a mixed diet plenty of fresh veggies Zucchini, Squash, Cucumber what seem to get the female fat with eggs was the once a week frozen bloodworm and fresh shrimp.

I noticed the female getting very fat and at first I thought she had some kind of bloat problem, but then the male started to exhibit the same behavior as my other Bristlenoses in the cave facing front and back the female lurking close by and both chasing the other female/male away.

I was sure that they were about to spawn so left my iPad recording, got a lot of video but two short clips of the female entering and leaving sometime later no sign of the male! I then noticed that the female looked like she just had her stomach pumped again the same as other bristlenoses. I was not going to touch the cave to check just in case I disturbed the male.

The following morning a slight glimpse of the male so everything was looking like they had spawned, then in the afternoon the nightmare that makes every fish keeper go in to a tail spin!!! the male was outside the cave and there was a big group of eggs a few inches away. So I now had proof that they had in fact spawned but as I had no egg tumbler I quickly took my wife's stainless still sieve from the kitchen carefully got the eggs in the sieve without them leaving the water placed them at the top of the tank with an airstone underneath creating movement. Then all I could do was wait and hope, the normal 5 days passed the eggs were still orange and what looked like eyes in the eggs only on day 6 longer then normal Bristlenoses did the eggs start to hatch. I left them in the sieve until they lost there egg sack and then moved them to a small 10 gallon tank that is mature with a sponge filter. I now have approx 50 young LD72's babies that are perfectly healthy and growing.

Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/93053515@N05/

congrats on the success

Wow! Good job and awesome photos!

Thanks for sharing and be sure to keep us updated

well done mate. big feather in your cap!

This ks cool ! I have 2 male LDA072 but at the moment cant source any females, am attepting to cross breed one of them with one of my female L144, i think thay attempted a spawn the other night, fingers crossed....