My first Ancistrus Claro spawn

[Jacqueline]

I felt as the most lucky and honored person when I obtained 8 beautiful little Ancistrus Claro from Julian Dignal at the Lwelse days at Hannover last year. Still at the size of around 4-5cm I set them up in a tank to grow them on for at least a year. Good feeding and lots of water changes to keep them going strong and healthy.

Last sunday (12-1) they caught my attention because they were displaying breeding behavior. Here a short video: https://youtu.be/1MxpS6AI8M8

The next morning I found my very first Claro eggs They were all outside of the cave scattered around the tank. I collected 12 eggs in total and put them in an eggtumbler.



At day 4 the first wiggler hatched very premature, it died one day later. But this morning (day 7) 2 stronger fry hatched Still got 2 more eggs that have to hatch. Not bad for me, this is my very first successful attempt at hatching eggs from day 0 myself Tried many times with other species but always failed. So I'm very happy with this outcome so far! But I do hope the males will learn to keep the eggs inside the cave, I think that is the best way.

Video of the newly hatched fry: https://youtu.be/0mBTu94F_qY

To be continued...