A question about breeding bristle nose catfish

[dan84]

Hi all,

I just got hold of a breeding pair of albino bristlenose catfish. I have them in a 2 foot tank on their own with a purpose made bredding cave which the male wont come out of and some drift wood. The pair have bred before but they dont seem to be interested in each other at all. The female is really inactive during the day, and I know that they are nocturnal but she spends most of the day either stuck to the underside of a piece of drift wood or resting upside down on the substrate under the drift wood. I havent attemped to breed these before so just wondering if this is normal behaviour?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

[toddnbecka]

They like a fair bit of current in the tank, if you don't have an oversized hob filter on the tank drop in an airstone to increase the turnover. Otherwise, just feed them a good diet (NLS pellets, spirulina flake, and occaisonally canned green beans works great for me) and they'll spawn when they're ready. They may be taking a break if they had been spawning previously.
In any case the female will pretty much ignore the male until she's loaded with eggs and ready to spawn. Then she'll visit his cave long enough to drop them and leave him to tend them, going on her way again. I've seen fry remain in the cave with the male for as long as 2 weeks after their yolk sacs were absorbed, but they'll venture out when they're ready.
If the male happens to kick out any eggs (or even the whole clutch) you can move them into a net breeder and they'll hatch fine as long as there's a decent water flow around/through the net. Adult BN aren't any threat to fry of any kind. You'll need something larger to grow out the fry though. Typical clutch size is 50-100 eggs depending on the size/age of the female, and once they start spawning they tend to keep producing regularly for at least 5-6 rounds before taking a break.

[Alasse]

I have my breeding trio in a custom 3.5ftx15"x12" tank. 2x air driven filters, couple of bits of wood, tannin affected water, 2 breeding caves. No light.

I leave them be drop in algae disk and zuchinni. They bred straight away.

[dan84]

Thanks for the tips. I think Im doing everything right...time will tell :)