Account of my first clutch

Hi folks, just joined the board!

Just having had my second clutch, I found this place trying to find out more information....


Our first clutch came unbeknownst to me. It occured down inside the silly volcano we have in the tank.

We set this 30gal high tank up just after Christmas of 2012.
(Aqueon HOB, water temp ~ 78 F)
After cycling the tank for a month (with a couple feeder goldfish to add poo) things were crystal clear and the LFS told us everything looked good. So we started the tank with some tetras, a couple male guppies, two cory cats and two small BNs, one albino and one common.

As the BNs grew, the common got bigger quicker and soon started growing his bristles. Right about the same time he got his first branch.. he started getting very ornery, hogging every bit of wafer (the cory's love them). He would bully the cory's, chasing them around the tank.... and then started hiding in the volcano.. coming out seldom.

Right about this time.. something happened to the water. The bio load must have spiked (I was doing water changes every couple of weeks... probably not enough) a bacterial bloom happened and then shortly after an algal bloom turned the water to murk.

Anyhow, to rectify this problem, I went on a furious WC campain. Doing 25% water changes daily and in a couple of cases twice daily in the process of trying to deal with getting water conditions right. ( I now do 24% WC about twice a week.... more if the filter elements get munged up without me noticiing )

Anyhow, after reading up on things after the fact, I think the frequent water changes I was doing encouraged the BNs to spawn as about a couple weeks after I got things right... the male pleco disappeared for days at a time. Just before then, he was so aggressive that I considered getting rid of him. Next thing I know, I'm seeing the male out and about... much calmer.. much nicer... letting the female munch on cucumber instead of chasing her off... he was a new "man"... and then a week later... I see this little thing stuck to the side of the tank! It was a little pleco! searching around for more, I shut off the air pump to the volcano and looked inside using a flashlight and sure enough! There were little plecos wiggling all over!

So in hindsight, I think the keys to my inadvertent "success" was 1: providing plenty of varied foods (wafers, zuchini, cucumber, spinach) to get the BNs in good shape, and then performing somewhat rapid water changes with soft (my well water is fed from good old oak and maple swamps that surround my town. but luckily there's no iron in the soil around here.). Also, the volcano itself is the main source of aeration for the tank with the airstone at the bottom... my wife refers to it as "the brothel"

One month later.. on a lark, I did a couple rapid water changes... voila! clutch 2!

 to Bristlenose World and it sounds like you have got everything running well nice to have you with us  

  glad to have you with us