Aspidoras raimundi 'Ceara'

[Conchonius]

These arrived as Aspidoras carvalhoi, but as far as I can tell nobody's seen a definitive carvalhoi this side of the twenty-first century, and the fish marketed as such are merely a regional variant of A. raimundi.

I had read that they're easy and prolific breeders, which I can now confirm. I got ten, one came down with a swimbladder issue that it did not recover from, and the other taught me that Aspidoras are better at jumping off the tank than their Corydoras (and ex-Corydoras) cousins are. The remaining eight, kept in a 54L (~14g, although the water level is a bit lower to prevent further jumpers) tank, started laying eggs pretty much right away.

The first and second batches were fungused and I suspect consumed by the two Hoplisoma gossei that were in the tank with them (another prospective breeding project), so this youngster is about all that hatched of them. I will see how the upcoming eggs fare in a "colony" breeding system, and switch to actually using my fry box if I find that too few eggs make it into wigglerhood (the box you see currently acts as a container for filter material).

For now, my main worry is the height of the tank. Aspidoras, like other cories, must apparently breathe air even as fry, so if the current water height (30 cm) is too high for them to surface, they might drown. In addition, I have far too many shrimp and shrimplets here, which can't really pick off the eggs but certainly do compete with the larvae for edible detritus.

In any case, these are nice and rewarding fish. Hopefully I will be able to succeed in hatching bigger groups. I will update with growth logs as this batch develops.

 

[Milingu]

No need to worry about the tank height. Even in a 60cm tank they go to the surface without any problems.

 

[Conchonius]

I tried the fry box plan, but it was a bust - I placed the filter outlet in the box to produce some flow, but this ended up dumping assorted filter gunk into the box and fungusing all the eggs there.

Good thing, then, that I hadn't put all my metaphorical (and also literal) eggs in the same basket. A few wigglers still hatched from the remainder scattered across the tank. They look fragile, and get slapped around by their elders' frantic activity during feeding, but we'll see how they fare. The adults are on their fifth or sixth batch right now, so it's not like I'm lacking in eggs.

I really need to figure out how to vaccuum the bottom without possibly sucking the fry, however. Look at all the poop!

 

[Conchonius]

Starting to get the hang of it. The eggs hatch in 6-7 days and fungus very easily, but have good viability (~90%) if kept in an aerated bowl treated with metylene blue. The fry are best kept there until they absorb their yolk sac, after which they are transferred to the hang-on-side incubator and fed crumbled algae wafers and decapsulated artemia eggs (both of which have the advantage of coloring the fry's gut, so I can tell when they've been eating). The way my filter outlet is placed also deposits plenty of mulm into the incubator, providing some supplemental nutrition (this is also why the eggs fungus so quickly in the tank).

I've also dropped a few fry into the tank by accident, where they also thrive, but I'll probably go with the fry box moving forward because I want to keep the F0 colony by themselves (one of the first fry is almost the size of its parents and will need to be netted out, which no doubt will require Old Man and the Sea-esque effort). Also, the fry in the tank have a strange habit of glass surfing, while the box fry are active but stay on the surface, which might contribute to the faster growth of the latter. Swimming constantly against the glass is energy-intensive at that size.

I have about 30-40 fry from two batches in the box and another 80-90 eggs about to hatch, so I might need a second box soon.