BREEDING Zebra Plecos - Made 12 Babies!

ever since I was a little kid I've been obsessed with keeping freshwater fish I find the process of taking a small group of fish and breeding them into a large number to be so fascinating especially within the confines of a glass box a few years ago I started my journey with a new species of fish during a frequent visit to my local fish store while I was having a look around at what was new I noticed a tank with a fish priced at $500 I could see the fish at first but after asking the store owner a few questions he lifted some Driftwood to show me this expensive species he told me these were a rare catfish known as the zebra pleco I asked why the fish was so expensive and he explained that it takes a long time for the fish to reach breeding size and on top of that by the time the fish breeds they only have 8 to 10 babies at a time and because they look cool the demand for them is insanely High I'd never seen seen a freshwater fish like this I went home and for the next few days couldn't take my mind off of keeping some of these fish a few days passed and my fascination with these fish continued to grow I watched countless videos on YouTube and read every single Forum post I could find I decided I was going to buy them but I needed more than two so I called around to the other shops in my city ask asking if they had any for sale I called pretty much everyone and by chance luck a shop on the other side of town had two as well but for $750 each it was steep but I decided it was worth it so I called the original shop to let them know that I would buy the fish but they told me they had just been sold it might seem dramatic but I was crushed I felt like I'd lost my chance and I didn't know whether this species would ever be available again [Music] I spent the next few months searching forums Facebook groups and Marketplace listings daily looking for a breeder of these fish I eventually made a listing myself saying that I'm wanting to buy these fish and left my phone number there about a month later I received a text from a breeder saying they were selling some babies and asked if I was interested in buying some I told him that I was definitely interested and gave him a call we got to chatting and spent a good hour or so on the phone talking about his setup and how he's been breeding these fish he sent me some photos of the fish and told me he was from another city and would need to ship me the fish there was 10 available and they wanted $450 each by this time I'd collected quite a bit of money in my zebra pleco fund so I decided that to give myself the best chance at breeding these fish I would take all all 10 they asked me to place a deposit as he already had some others interested and pay the rest before he sent them I paid the deposit and a few days later paid the outstanding amount ready in time to be shipped on Monday morning on Monday I waited patiently to receive the notice from the breeder that he'd sent the fish they were meant to land at lunchtime but as the time came closer I hadn't heard anything I decided to give him a call and in L noticed that I could no longer call the number I'd been blocked I called my bank straight away and told them I'd been scammed but they notified me that the money was gone and there was nothing I could do I felt like such an idiot I'd never been scammed before and the last place I expected to be scammed was on a niche fish Forum I was shattered not only did I lose the money but I also didn't get the fish I ran a small investigation on this scammer myself and with the limited information I had I found his profile on a forum and through this was able to find some other contacts he may have scammed I called around and was amazed to find out that it was not just me who had been scammed I found at least five others who had been duped with a total amount of over $50,000 it weirdly made me feel better knowing I wasn't the only one I reported it to the police and left it there and over the next few months I continued looking for a seller and eventually found another who this time seemed legit I confirmed with some others in the hobby that he was for real and ended up buying five Ze plecos from him I almost couldn't believe it by the time I got [Music] them I took them to the fish room and set them up in a growout tank and got myself prepared for the long wait ahead of me a few months later I got offered a few more by the the same breeder I couldn't resist and I added another four to my Colony I grew these fish out for a few years which takes us to where we are today so today is a momentous day here in the fish room I almost can't believe this I finally got a spawn from one of the fish that I just kind of never thought I would have so this morning I walked into the fish room and I saw in my zra pleco tank that one of the males was actually inside the cave and I took my little flashlight had a look in there and there was eggs I can't honestly believe this so I've sort of got to eat my words here I've made a video in the past talking about breeders doing dishonest things and selling all males or all females to certain people and I definitely have to eat my words here and say that this has not happened here with these zebs this there's a few things that I'm just going to note so that I can come back to this myself as a reference but basically I've had these set up for at least a year in this tank there's nine zebra plecos I'm completely unsure what the sex ratio is I'm convinced now that it doesn't matter I have a few different caves in here and the thing that changed it for me this week was water changes I actually the other day went back to an old video that I used to love as a kid and that was the Eric rock fish room tour with Cory I really listened to this and there was something he talked about he you know he talks about being the fish all this sort of stuff he talked about just doing 50% water changes every day for a week and you'll see amazing results with all your fish and I'm here to say that this actually works I didn't do anything special with my water my water is about 200 parts per million hardness so it's quite hard water I think what happened here was with those daily water changes it got rid of all the nitrite in the water so I've done this for the whole system just my pleco rack and I instantly have seen way better results with all of my fish like all the cories in here have started breeding really well I think there might even be a spawn in my 2011 tank and I've gotten a spawn out of these fish so that was what I did every day for a week I think it has been a week now I've done a 50% water change the other thing too was I fed them a little bit of live black worm I think this might have also helped but I think those water changes were the main trigger what I'm going to do I'm like in between two mines here because they are in the back corner of the fish room so I'm not going to walk past this tank I'm intentionally standing away from this tank like you can see so that that male can't see me I'm probably just going to leave these fish I'm not going to do any more water changes I'm not going to feed them either until those eggs hatch if that male hatches those eggs in there I'm going to take them out but I don't want to touch them until they're hatched because I really just don't want to risk doing anything to them I've tried pulling pleco eggs before it just never works for me so I'm probably going to leave them in there until then when they hatch I might start adding some Botanicals to this tank and I might even just let those fry come out and roam the tank because I just don't want to risk it at all these fish are very very expensive I couldn't give about the money all I want to do is get babies every plecos like this is a fish that I've been absolutely obsessed with for years for this to have finally happened I can't I honestly cannot believe it so each one of those eggs in there technically is worth like at least 500 bucks but you don't really think about that stuff as a breeder all I want to think about now is making sure I don't do anything to this tank that would disrupt that male and stop him from successfully raising these babies so most of the time when I have a new species breed I expect to lose the first batch I just hope this isn't the case with these um I've still got the the original nine that I bought years ago and yeah this has just been a long long ride these fish have follow me for a very long time I've had them since babies yeah very very exciting so I'll let you guys know how it all [Music] goes all righty well it's a week later I'm back with good news our M has done a fantastic job and still has all of his eggs they've actually hatched today and I'm going to be pulling these eggs out of the cave today so for all you guys wondering how I did this basically I didn't touch the tank the whole week didn't feed the tank once didn't change the water on it and we also went as far as not even walking past here so that helped a lot and he's you can tell he's definitely stressed out with me standing here so today we're going to be pulling these eggs out because his job's kind of over and I want to follow all of the expert advice that I've gotten from my friends on how to do this from Dr Thomas from aquam Malik all those people who I look up to and we're going to be pulling these eggs out and putting them into a breeder box this is a DIY breeder box for plecos and we're going to be floating this in the same tank as the parents that way the fry don't have to be transferred to a different type of water and we're just going to keep all the parameters the same in here I'm probably not going to change the water for the first month I just want to get these eggs out of the cave so I don't think I've ever been this nervous about something with fish like I'm so excited cool all right it's floating I guess this is the big moment so I hope I'm doing the right thing here all right he's done a good job keeping him in there there's our first one there's another one another one this might sound so cringy but like this is like honestly a day that's been four or five years in the making I can't believe that I'm actually getting to do this let see there one there 2 three 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 what we're going to do is add a hiding space in here that they can go under and hide under so I've got this little piece of Terra Cotta here it's just a crushed piece of pot that you can get anywhere I'm just going to put that on the floor of the box and then they'll stick to the bottom of this and it'll keep them off the floor of the box and that means their mouths will be away from where they're feeding which is a good thing and and it'll just keep them nice and healthy because they don't want to have things building up in here cause them harm so we just want to keep them somewhere nice and hidden so we go ahead and add this in exactly like that we're going to also add a soaked piece of Indian armor Leaf here my friend Jason cies so I've been soaking this it's just a little piece and this is going to have some biofilm on it and things that the zebs will use in their in their first couple of weeks to kickart their guts and we'll put that in some like that what we're going to do is just keep this box fastidiously clean I'm not going to let any crap build up in here I'm going to give these guys so much attention and I'll keep you guys updated over the next few days [Music] [Music] once I noticed the babies had used all of their yolk sacks I decided to give them their first meal I used this instant baby brine shrimp as recommended to me by some of my pleco friends I fed a very small [Music] amount and the babies took to it instantly I continued to feed this to them once in the morning morning and once in the afternoon a couple weeks later I transferred them to a new box as my Dy pleco Brocks broke once I noticed they were putting on a bit more size I introduced some bug Buffet to their diet this should give them all the vitamins and nutrients they need to grow and develop properly they've all been doing fantastic and I only lost one in the early Rous stage likely to a genetic deformity but I'm here to say I'm now the proud dad of 12 baby zcos and hopefully more to come thank you so much for watching this video I really appreciate it I hope you guys enjoyed it and I'm so happy to have finally reached this stage in my fishkeeping journey I'll see you guys in the next [Music] one

Channel: KeepingFishSimple

Views: 553,154

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Id: Cj1ECMReASo

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023