My Leopard Frogs just gave Birth

[kyle]

Well I have been in the hobby for about 15 years now and have only had success with breeding Mollies, Guppies, Cherry Shrimp, a few Yellow Lab Cichlids and a few Galaxy Rasboras aka Celestial Pearl Danio's. But my success with breeding was limited to small numbers. I have been trying vigorously with Discus for most of the last 10 years and can only get them to lay eggs fertilize and I have even seen tails but never to the free swimming stages. Usually the parents end up eating them.

About a year and a half ago Rich and I took a drive to Detroit and picked up some plecos. I purchased 7 adult leopard frog plecos L-134 and took them home put them in a 30 gallon tank with heater 2 sponge filters and lots of water changes about 90 percent twice a week and lots of drift wood and pleco slate caves. About a year ago I found 1 fry swimming in the tank but never saw them breed. That fry is about 2 inches now.

About 2 months ago I purchased some Discus fry 1/2 inch about 40 of them and didnt have any available aquarium space so I put them in with the L-134's. By this time I figured I had 3 females and 4 males L-134's. I seperated 2 females and a male and put them into a 10 gallon thinking this would be the breeding group. Possibly too much male aggression in the 30 Gallon for spawning to occur. During this time I added a eheim 2217 filter to the 30 gallon and only sponge filter and heater to the 10 gallon again with lots of driftwood and pleco caves. And continued to do 90% water changes 1-2 times a week. I even attempted to simulate the raining season with the water changes by turning off the heater adding r/o water and turning the heater back on day 3.

I fed the 30 Gallon tank more as it had a bigger filter and the discus fry are always hungry.

I should also add both tanks have cherry shrimp in them.

To my surprise 2 nights ago I came in to check on the aquariums and turned on the lights and saw 3 young fry in the 30 gallon with the discus and 3 male L-134 and 1 female L-134.

Since then I have noticed about 6-7 fry at one time but there are many hiding places Im hoping there are more in there.

I am currently seperating the fry from the adults and rearing them in another tank.

[Rush2112]

Hi Kyle,

That is great news. Congrats.
I have been waiting myself for some time but I think my leopard frogs are too young. How big are your breeders? Any pictures.

Gino

[klc]

Congratulations. You must be both pleased and very excited to have a breeding colony. Best of luck rearing the fry. I hope you have many more successful spawns.

[CanadaPleco]

Awesome, glad to hear they spawned again for you!!!

[kyle]

Hey guys Ill try to get some pics but both tanks have alot of wood in them.

The adults are about 4-5inches in length with fins. Look for theirs stomachs they get really protruded when the are holding. Then try a water change and turn off the heater for a couple of days and wait.

But Im no expert I may have just gotten lucky we'll see.

[Bwhiskered]

Congratulations. Those young discus could be eating some of the fry. I have 4 adults. I figure that there is one male and 3 females. Two have been in the same hollow in a piece of wood for a week now. Maybe I have two weird males in there as nothing is happening.

[Zebrapl3co]

Nice Kyle. Contratulation. I didn't know that many people where trying to breed them. I was kind of hoping to get my hands on some as well. Oh well, looks like I'll be looking at some other plecos to try now.

[Bwhiskered]

What percentage of RO water are you using? Do you have a PH and a PPM reading? I picked up another young pair at the Ohio Cichlid Extravaganza last month. They are 3" long and won't be old enough to breed before at least spring.

[kyle]

For water changes most of the time I have been running the waste water from my r/o into the L-134 tanks with lots of wood. The lower r/o water has been going to my 150 Gallon Discus tank which I measure to about 6 ppm TDS. Instead of wasting the run-off water I have been adding it to my other tanks. Still havnt had any luck with my Discus though.

I have not measured the L-134 tanks during water changes except temp on occassion.

About 6 weeks ago after I seperated the L-134 into 2 different tanks I emptied 1/2 of the tanks and added about 10% pure R/O water a day for 3 days with the heater off, lasting 3 days. I know the numbers dont help because I dont know how pure the r/o water was or the existing TDS (however I started a new r/o membrane) On day 3 I turned the heater back on with full water

The 30 Gallon tank with the L-134 bread almost immediately. Remeber there were 7 L134 prior to this change. Although I didnt see any aggression Im sure the ratios were off in an tank this size. I think 4 males 3 females.

The 10 gallon with the newly moved L134 just bred about 1 week ago. Yes both colonies have now bred. I just found a young fry in the tank that looks about 1 week old, no egg sac and the smallest fry I have ever seen. Less then .25 of an inch no egg sac beige all over no color or stripes. I only found 1 there may be others in the cave but my tanks are fully loaded with driftwood and plants making it diffcult to see.

I have since moved the young discus out of the 30 gallon into a proper tank. Seperating them from the pleco fry

And the young L134 that I could catch was moved to a 30 long growout tank with other L134 and 2 adult L46 and a L46 fry. The L46 are suppose to like hard water but I think they are both adult males. I kept themn in a hard water tank for a year and nothing happened so I added the wood and plants for a change.

I have tried to add pics at 360 bytes each (under the imit) to the gallery on this site but it is saying "Fatal error: Call to undefined function: imagetypes() in /home/canadapl/public_html/photoplog/functions.php on line 36"

[kyle]

Monday Dec 10 2007
I figured it has been about 5 weeks plus since the 30 gallon tank bred (with the suspected 1 female, 2 males, and third u/k sex. So I decided I would try a water change with r/o water addition. After just emptying the water in my tank 1/2 way and adding about 10% back of r/o water I noticed some white balls on the bottom of the tank with small tails and eyes trying to swim upstream from a cave. They already bred again and beat me to the water change. I dont know if the r/o water is necessary as I have not done this for at least 5-6 weeks, but had many water changes since with the hard waste water from the r/o system. It could be just the large amount of driftwood in the tank that is softening the water enough for them.

Ill try to get some specs on the water after I fill the tanks in 3 days

[CanadaPleco]

Hey Kyle, hope you had a great Christmas. I got the photo upload thing fixed if you want to try posting that pic of your baby leopard frogs up again.

How are they all doing?