I agree with you about the gut bacteria needed from older fish. In this case I have been busy with work and just needed a tank setup so I ended up not moving any poop in, in fact it didn’t even cross my mind.Nice!
I am one who believes that a lot of the B&W Hypans I keep and starting with zebras, that the fry need to obtain some of their gut bacteria by eating poop from older individuals. So, whenever I start a grow tank for smaller babies I move some of the poop from the breeding tank into the new grow tank. Over time as the fish grow and begin to be sold, I always leave a couple of the older larger fish in the grow tank to serve as poop suppliers as I move out the rest of the fish.
When I began with zebras I notices this growth difference early on and posted about it and discovered others had the same growth difference between grow and breeder tanks. The other thing I spotted with the zebras was that the Alpha male was the 2nd biggest not the biggest. Others have seen that as well. This I have not noticed in other Xingu B&W Hypans. But then I began having to many fish and tanks to be able to figure that out. I t may also hold in those tanks but I just never noticed.
My experience has been that the SW take a bit more time from birth to begin to spawn the the regulars.
Here are some of my offspring ready to go out.
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Usually when they start spawning they tend to continue. Make sure you keep up on diet quality. I recently bought a bunch of the Ebo-Aquaristk food from Germany. I spent tpp much moneu but the plecos and corys seem to like it and it is a high quality food. I am using it to replace the kensfish sticks which are not bad but, also not the best quality ingredients. The Ebo stuff is was costly to bring in.
i have also noticed with my zebra plecos the oldest biggest male is not breeding. I’m tact I don’t even think it’s my second biggest male breeding, maybe third biggest. My zebras are always breeding and I usually have fry at some stage of growth with them.
I consider myself lucky bc my SW started spewing in less than two years (I want to say less than a year). No signs of another spawn yet though.
I have noticed the zebra plecos will allow their babies to stay in the cave for as long as needed where as the SW didn’t keep the fry in the cave for longer than a week or two after hatching. Where my male zebra has had up to 4 generations in his cave with him.
food wise i was feeding imported expensive food and then noticed a lot of locals buying my plecos were coming back and telling me they were not eating in their tanks. So I ended up switching back to something cheaper and locally sourced.
Your fry look fantastic, how big were they before you sent them to their new homes?