# Bristlenose pleco spawn



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

My Bristlenose plecos just spawned! Here is a picture of a baby to scale with a pond snail.


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## ddavila06 (Jan 31, 2009)

that is one ugly pleco! lol, congrats!! they are so ugly and get a little cuter as they grow


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Congrats! Was it the pair you got from me?

They're a lot of fun to raise, though - they start off all tiny like that (almost look like little tadpoles.... which is what I call them ) and they're fairly slow growers at first, but once they hit a certain point in the juvie stage, they start putting on size at a faster pace. Give them a few months and you'll have plecos of all sizes sticking to every available surface, lol!


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Yes! They are your pair Amanda  I put a black broken ceramic cooking utensil-holder in the discus tank and the male almost immediately started guarding the entrance. Then about 10 days later I saw the first baby pleco sneaking up on the discus food that falls to the bottom of the tank. 

I'm not sure how many there are, but the male is still guarding the cave so either there are more on the way, or he plans to have more.

I'm really excited about these babies! I love bristle nose plecos and they are excellent at cleaning driftwood of terrible spot algae.


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

:mrgreen: I told you that female was the same species, lol. Glad to hear they're enjoying their new home. I've found they tend to produce a new batch of fry every 3-4 weeks or so - in a few months you'll probably want to start sending me hate mail for all the little plecos sticking to things in your tank. They are quite efficient at getting rid of algae problems, though - I take it they took care of that piece of cedar w/o any problems?

Whether the male has eggs/fry or not, he'll probably spend most of his time in his cave, only coming out to eat and so forth. After all, even without fry he wouldn't want all the _other_ male plecos to come along and steal his space.  The females are usually a little more transient since they don't have eggs to guard, but they still tend to hang out in a few favorite spaces during the day (aka naptime).... all that said, they probably have more eggs by now. They're like factories once they get going XD As for how many... mine seem to put out about 40-ish at a time, but that's just a guess from what I could count all at once... probably safe to say you have somewhere between 20-60 to start, though.


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## flashbang009 (Aug 6, 2009)

If you're ever interested in getting rid of some of them, i'd gladly take a few


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