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Today is some of my L397s first birthday (1 year old ). That's the age they become adults -able to breed - hoping to see the flapping of tiny fins soon. .
I took a pic of one yesterday:

Great milestone I find after a year of owning a colony or individual fish you get a real sense of how the individual fish behave and this its self is very important when observing for spawning behaviour or illness ect.

NOW SPAWN THEM AND SEND THEM TO CANADA

Regards
James

Have been some signs of pre spawning behaviour. I did tweak the original photo slightly (certainly not an airbrushed pleco though ) This one has been leaving the cave a lot more recently, so may be a female. A Re-scape of the tank is due tomorrow so i can get a good view in the caves. Hopefully, then some babies.

Great job. I do the same thing I mark how old my fish are.

With 9 of these, my plan is to regularly check in on the progress of their development. This time, the 6 that are now adults, i will be checking upon in the next few days, obviously this is including establishing the sex of each fish, now a year old I hopefully should be able to tell. I have 2 definate hairy tailed males, 2 others frequently move around the other caves and then 2 mostly hideout in amongst the wood I have in the tank. The 3 smaller, younger ones are still too small to conclusively establish the sex and there's no behavioural indications as they each don't have their own cave just yet.

pleconut wrote:Today is some of my L397s first birthday (1 year old ). That's the age they become adults -able to breed - hoping to see the flapping of tiny fins soon. .
I took a pic of one yesterday:

20151226_114043.jpg

Very beautiful fish.

pleconut wrote:With 9 of these, my plan is to regularly check in on the progress of their development. This time, the 6 that are now adults, i will be checking upon in the next few days, obviously this is including establishing the sex of each fish, now a year old I hopefully should be able to tell. I have 2 definate hairy tailed males, 2 others frequently move around the other caves and then 2 mostly hideout in amongst the wood I have in the tank. The 3 smaller, younger ones are still too small to conclusively establish the sex and there's no behavioural indications as they each don't have their own cave just yet.

With my limited experience I find that females prefer wood tangles and tend to avoid caves. Kind of an interesting idea to sex fish behaviourally, but I feel that this would be remarkably inconsistent amongst different species (let alone with in the same species)

Not sure if this means that the youngsters are female, though one was said to be male when I posted pics here for sexing, the two oldest that have designated a cave for themselves were said to be males, as well as the one in the picture above, this one seemed to prefer a cave but recently has moved caves or is out amongst the wood and happy to not be in one, so 50/50 at least in terms of behaviour. The other cave swapper, was said to be female and has no odontode growth, in Panoquolus, females will move caves, the two living amongst the wood, were said to be females, so observations in behaviour has more or less been in line with what's already been suggested. Making observations such as this along with the usual methods of sexing are just another means to come to a conclusion of the sex of the fish.

Just turned on the tank lights today and found...one hairy tail males' tail sticking out of his cave and another tail with it. Has he got a lady L397 in that cave with him?

Let's hope so.

I have the tank dimly lit today, the male has been getting distracted by a slice of sweet potato near to his cave i fed late last night, so i dont know if the other fish is still in his cave.

Female has only just left the cave, male is just inside it, some half-hearted fanning taking place. I will transfer this back to the recently started designated topic,

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 11#p292702

So they may both continue in their own threads.