My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

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mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Mon May 21, 2012 5:57 am

Hi all,

I've had the gastromyzon species of borneo suckers before, and spent a lot of money on buying lots of them. Unfortunately some of them wouldn't survive long, some died of the patchy disease (I wish I had some antibiotics for them), some wouldn't adapt to feeding properly, and then lastly a dragon fly nymph hatched in the tank and it stalked and killed the last remaining 6 gastromyzon. I also had 12 medium sized sewellia lineolata, but lost 6 or 7 of them to the same dragon fly nymph. (this was probably a year ago).

This was how the tank looked back then. It is 30cm x 30cm and 1meter long. It has a propellor style powerhead at one end (near the heater), with above that a large hang-on-back filter. There is round river gravel and large rocks in the tank. And very high lighting above it to promote lots of aglae on the rocks. The tank has a brilliant front right-to-left flow, and then along the back behind the rocks it flows left-to-right. There are lots of eddies in and around the rocks as well.
Image

About 8 months ago I purchased 4 very large wild-caught Sewellia sp spotted. They were a bit larger than the 4 Sewellia lineolata that I have in another tank, and over twice as large as the medium sized sewellia lineolata in the tank they were joining. By this stage I had worked out a reliable method of feeding the fish.

In the picture below you can see the size difference, and the coloring difference between the stripy lineolata and the spotted species.
Image

I feed them a variety of dry feeds that I grind up in a pepper grinder. There is also a very healthy population of black worms in the gravel that keeps the detritus levels down and gives the fish some live food (if they desire). Every couple of days I also feed two slices of zuchini, weighted down. And a few times I week I feed some blood worms or brine shrimp or other type of frozen live food. Most feeding times I turn off all filters and the airpump so that the food will tend to settle.

Then in December I decided to rearrange the layout of the rocks in the tank, and remove a lot of the littler rocks. And I discovered this little guy:
Image

I didn't see many others, but I was a bit gung-ho with my re-arranging before I noticed the baby. Of the few others that I saw, only one of them survived the re-arrange.

Unfortunately a few weeks later in the heat of summer (32degrees in the tank!) I changed the water too quickly and the temperature dropped too fast and 3 of the spotted sewellia became shocked and only two of them recovered. I won't make that mistake ever again. Since that moment I was always worried that I had inadvertantly killed one of the breeding fish. And a few weeks after that water change I also stopped seeing the little baby.

However, I kept up the frequent water changes. My water changes are often done by simply using a clear hose to suck up individual snails out of the tank. I filtering the waste water through a large fine weave net to catch the snails as the water tumbles into a bucket. The snails then became snacks for my clown loaches or the loaches in the other 6ft tank. The water is then tipped onto my strawberries, and fresh water replaced into the tank.

And I kept up the high quality feeding.

It is winter here in Australia now (not that Brisbane where I live gets very cold), and the house average temperature is 21-22 degrees Celcius. So I need to heat the water in the tanks. I use a digital thermostat with dual heating and cooling relay controls. The thermostat allows me to adjust the temperature of the tank in 0.1 degree increments without actually adjusting the thermostat on the heater element. I have so many heaters of different origin that I don't trust the 'temp gauge' on them. So to reduce the chance of me adjusting the aquarium heater too low or too high, I use a thermostat to control the power to the heater. So over the course of a fortnight I can raise the water temp from 24degrees up to 28.5, and then I do a large water change of half the tank (with a VERY slow introduction of the water) and I lower the set point of my thermostat back to 23-24 degrees. I can't do this normally because in summer the ambient house temperature is a nice 27degrees, and with the high lights on the tank the water can often easily get up to 31degrees (which never seems to bother the fish in this tank unless I do a crazy water change, such as what I did above that killed one of my fish).

Then 3 weeks ago I started seeing fry again. I was incredibely releived.
This picture probably has 2-3 other fry in it that isn't circled, but between the quality of the Samsung Galaxy sII camera on macro and all the scratches in the glass I was unable to find them in the photo for you. But I do think there were at least two other fry visible to my eyes when I took the photo. (taken on the 10th May).
Image

Water changes are done 2-4 buckets at a time now. Every 2-3 days. Lots and LOTS of feeding of small amounts of ground up food, as well as the zucchini slices. It is amazing to see them skittering around the adults. I once saw an adult completely cover a little baby, but a moment later the baby came dashing out from underneath.
Image

Almost everywhere I look in the tank now there is movement of sewellia fry. I guess that there might be close to 25 of them, probably from at least two different spawns as there are two distinct sizes amongst them. At the end of the tank where most of the above photos are taken are about 15 fry.

I am now building another diy thermostat for my other sewellia tank to better control the temperature in that tank. I would love to put all of them in a 4 or 5 foot long tank, but I don't want to disrupt the current breeding. :?

As soon as I can source some anti bacterial medicine to treat the patchy disease I'll start setting up another tank for the gastromyzon.

I'll keep posting updates.

But I have some questions for readers: I want these fry to grow fast, but I have no idea on what the best feed would be for them. And I also don't know if I should take them out and put them into a small 2ft or a smaller 10gal tank, without varying water temperatures, and without adults competeing for food (not that it bothers the little guys when it comes to their size and getting into all the crevices between the rocks and pepples and gravel). Anyone have thoughts to offer me?

Cheers, Matt
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

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Jim Powers
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Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by Jim Powers » Mon May 21, 2012 12:41 pm

Congratulations!! I wish I could find another spotted Sewellia to go with the one I found as a contaminant a year or so ago.
Sewellia tend to grow slowly so keep that in mind. I would just continue to provide a variety of foods and leave them with the parents. I have found that Sewellia and some other hillstreams (L. disparis, Formosania sp. and Pseudgastromyzons in particular) really like par-boled spinach leaves. I just take spinach leaves(it works with kale, too), rinse them with warm water, put them in a bowl, pour boiling water over them and cover. I let them sit for at least 20 min. sometimes adding more boiling water. I then remove them and rinse with cool water, and place in the tank anchored by a rock. This is a good way to feed young hillstreams because they can graze with the adults and on the stems and scraps left after the adults have eaten most of the leaf.
You might want to try setting up a fan to flow air across the tank to keep the temps from getting too high, also.
Keep us posted.
Image

plaalye
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Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by plaalye » Mon May 21, 2012 4:55 pm

Agree with Jim, though if you happened to have another tank with excess algae it wouldn't hurt to move them and let them feed without having to compete with the adults. I have young that are a year old and still in the 3/4" range. very slow growers.

@ Jim, wetspot often has s. spotted to ship.

mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Tue Jun 12, 2012 4:59 am

Thanks for the spinach suggestion Jim.

Well my fry are getting even bigger. I have absolutley no idea how many there are in the tank now, but I haven't noticed too many teeny tiny babies since the juveniles have started getting bigger than 10mm. I'm wondering if the juveniles might be snacking on some of the eggs from the almost nightly spawns. I am now feeding 3 thick slices of zucchini and leaves of silverbeet or spinach every couple of days. I am also squishing any snails into the rocks, after noticing that the babies seem to absolutely love the slimy mess that is left over.

I've got heaps of avaiable tanks for moving the fry across, but I don't have a strong enough light to encourage algae growth in a separate tank. I'll have to sort that out soon so that I can get them out. I am currently feeding the fish a small amount of food a few times in the morning, and then I have a auto-feeder on the tank that feeds again at 11am and 3pm, and then I feed a few times in the evening after work.

My largest fry would have to already be about 15mm long. And they are already doing the territorial chasing game with other juveniles.

As an aside.... Amazingly, my clown loaches LOVE rockmellon!
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:00 am

A few months later, and what a difference it makes. The tank is now completely over-run with juveniles and babies. I have been feeding lots and lots, and doing lots of frequent water changes, and yet the algae is still growing. Clearly the fish love it, because they keep spawning and keep growing. Every few days I rip out chunks of green beard algae, but I don't throw it away... I put it into my hang-on-back (HOB) filter. I can almost be guranteed that there are babies or eggs in that algae. My filter now probably has over 30 babies in it.

The below is the same tank, from a similar angle. You can see the circles around the juveniles, and the squares are around two of the visible adults. This is showing a tiny fraction of how many fish are in that tank!

I think my juveniles are maximum 2.5cm long. I wish I knew how to make them grow faster so I could sell them already!

Matt

Image
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:01 am

I also have some pictures somewhere of the fry in a white bowl. They are absolutely miniscule. I'll have to find them and post up some more images.
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Thu Apr 04, 2013 4:30 am

As an update, I've been selling off the 3-4cm juveniles now for a few weeks. Over 60 gone out the door to local fish keepers in a matter of no time.

I have a question about whether they are all striped or if I have both Spotted and striped juveniles...

Does any one have any photos of Sewellia Spotted fry and juveniles? I have two very distinct patterns on my juveniles, and as the finely stripped ones get larger I'm starting to wonder if the stripes are turning into spots and they are actually Spotted Sewellia, as opposed to Lineolata Striped.

Can any one offer advice?

Spotted juveniles, or just a finer striped pattern? (obviously one of them is a normal striped one)
These fish are some of my juveniles from my mixed Spotted and striped Sewellia tank (shown above in this thread)

Image

The image is mine that I posted on a local australian fish keeping forum
http://www.aquariumlife.com.au/showthre ... t=sewellia
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Thu Apr 04, 2013 6:34 am

I think I've answered my own question by doing some research on here:

http://www.loaches.com/articles/the-spa ... evelopment

Stripes turn into spots. I take that to mean I have lineolata fry and ALSO spotted fry.

Now to tell all my customers what they have :-)
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

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Jim Powers
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Location: Bloomington, Indiana

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by Jim Powers » Thu Apr 04, 2013 5:30 pm

Its amazing how much they change as they grow, particularly the spotted ones.
Image

mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Wed Apr 17, 2013 3:18 am

Well I have now sold almost all of my juvenile Lineolata and Spotted Sp fish. I think my total count was 40+ Sewellia Lineolata at 2-4cm, and 60+ Spotted Sp at 3-4.5cm. I still have 10-20 of each left, but they were too small to be sold just yet. The spotted ones sure grow faster and grow larger than their littler Lineolata cousins. Amazing how they just look like a finely patterned stripey Sewellia Lineolata, but then those lines get finer and finer and start joining and almost all the yellow base color disappears, and then they become spotty.

I was surprised at how much of an interest there was in these fish with the fish keepers in the local area. I had people drive 60 minutes (an easy 80km drive) to come and pick them up and see my tanks. I suspect there might be quite a few more members joining LoachesOnline in the next month or two.

And I turned my digital tank temperature controller up 0.5 C degree every day for 10 days ( to get to constant 28.5 degrees C), and then did a large long water change. 3 hours later I was standing near the tank and 3 of the adult male Lineolata were chasing the female around. She made a choice and picked a fella and they linked fins and did one or two quick rotations in front of the power head and spawned. A few days later I started noticing fry coming out from the gravel, but these fry were too big for that recent spawn. So my breeding endevours continue.

I think I need more females in that tank though... I'm worried that I might only have one and that she'll get a little bit warn out.
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

blackrosegul
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Joined: Thu May 02, 2013 3:39 am

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by blackrosegul » Thu May 02, 2013 5:26 am

But I have some questions for readers: I want these fry to grow fast, but I have no idea on what the best feed would be for them. And I also don't know if I should take them out and put them into a small 2ft or a smaller 10gal tank, without varying water temperatures, and without adults competeing for food (not that it bothers the little guys when it comes to their size and getting into all the crevices between the rocks and pepples and gravel). Anyone have thoughts to offer me???
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Jim Powers
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Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by Jim Powers » Thu May 02, 2013 11:16 am

I would probably just leave them alone.
Image

shuwae
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Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by shuwae » Thu May 02, 2013 5:48 pm

Mattyd, how long did the spotted sewellias take to start showing spots? I've been getting many fry in my tank but I am not sure which are lineolata and spotted. I've been giving them away to my co-worker so have no idea as I rarely see my co-worker to even talk about the fish now.

Blackrosegul, I think it is best to keep the fry in the parent tank. I tried moving some fry into another tank and those did not do as well as the ones with the parents. Not sure if the parents are eating the eggs but I always see new fry, after thinking I gave all of them away to friends/other hobbyists. From my experience, the fry grows fast until they start having the pattern and come out more with the parents. They then start to slow down a little in growth.

mattyd
Posts: 103
Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:55 pm
Location: Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by mattyd » Tue May 07, 2013 11:48 pm

leave your juveniles in the breeding tank as long as possible. My breeding tank is full of good algae and any juveniles I leave in it grow much much faster than the fish I move into holding tanks.

The spotted ones take a while to get their spots. I'd have a guess at 4-6 months. They are about the size of my breeding lineolata when the fine stripes turn into spots.

However it is pretty easy to tell them apart as young juveniles. As you can see in the pictures I posted on the 4th April, the Lineolata stripes are much more pronounced than the very fine and mottled stripes of the spotted ones.
5ft long rocky hillstream tank - Sewellia lineolata and spotted... and lots (and lots) of spotted fry
8ft Clown loach tank: 30+ clown loaches, 10+ Yoyos.
6ft tank for 16x botia kubotai, 13x Striata, 6x Sidthimunki - I need more sids

Helmet
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Joined: Tue Mar 19, 2013 7:41 am

Re: My Sewellia lineolata, sewellia spotted and their FRY

Post by Helmet » Fri May 10, 2013 3:54 am

Hi

Congratulations , those are some seriously nice specimens. And what a great size.

Could you tell me, have you ever experienced any aggressiveness from these fish, toward other species or each other?

Specifically the territorial displays, biting & such ?

Thanks

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