Thursday, December 15, 2011

Albino Bristlenose Plecos

A couple of years ago we purchased several Albino Bristlenose Plecos. These plecos were originally purchased for their uniqueness and we put them in several of our cichlid tanks to keep the algae at bay. We had purchased a new tank and decided to do some re-arranging. We took several lava rocks out of one of our existing tanks and moved them to one of the new tanks. Low and behold, about 2 weeks later there were dozens of tiny little baby albino plecos sucking on the glass. It was awesome. Sadly, none of these little guys survived. So that prompted us to take the two plecos from the tank we took the rocks out of (we had one male and one female in that tank) and put them in their own little tank. A month later, there were in excess of 100 tiny little plecos in there. We kept them all together (mom, dad, and all the babies) and about a month later there were another 100 or more. At that point we decided it was probably best to separate Mom and Dad!

The "babies" are over a year old now and range in size from 2 to 4 inches. We have a few nice large males that already have amazing bristles and quite a few that are starting to show bristles. We also have several females in various sizes available. Albino Bristlenose Plecos top out at about five inches max. The males have bristles all over the front of their face and nose while the females have a smooth face with maybe a small barb here or their. Despite their small size (compared to some other pleco species) these little suckers are excellent at eating algae and keeping your tanks looking nice:)

OB Peacocks

For quite sometime we have been raising Aulonacara Sp. OB Peacocks. These fish show dark to light blue blotches of color all over the body and fins. The predominant body color of our strain seems to be yellowish-orange. We have successfully bred these fish in the past and have adults from 3 to 5 inches available. It has been a little over a year since our last brood. Now we have a new batch of 35 little guys still in their juvenile stage(about one inch). They seem to have the same markings and coloration as the mother but this could change as they age. Babies will be available in a month or so.

New Obliquiden Zebras

A couple years ago we acquired a beautiful mating pair of Astatotilapia Latifasciata, commonly known as Obliquiden Zebras. Unlike most of our cichlids, these fish come from Lake Victoria rather than Lake Malawi. We currently have wonderfully colored-up males from two different broods. These fish show bright yellow and red over a silvery body with black vertical bars. They also show turquoise around their mouths and some striking pink highlights on their dorsal and tail fins. Females remain a soft army green with the vertical bars. We have males between 3 to 4 inches showing amazing coloration available. We do not currently have any females available for sale.