L046 - Hypancistrus zebra

I have kept these for about a year now and to date I did not have a decent photo of any of them, unfortunately even now I still don't have a great one, but here are a few I managed to get tonight after stripping everything out of the tank. You would think with every thing gone there would be no where to hide, but they still managed to get at the side of the juwel internal or below the black plastic strip at the bottom or even just behind each other They were really stressed and darting everywhere so I grabbed a few shots and started but their tank back together.


See the blue in the dorsal fin in the shot above, depending of the light this can be really intense on the white part of the dorsal.




Bad photo, but it gives and idea of the size variance.



L046 Hypancistrus zebra are from the Rio Xingu river in Brazil, they are endangered in their natural habitat and exports are banned for the last few years. These fish are from wild caught parents and there are fish from two separate batches. They grow very slowly and at different rates. They are meat eaters and love bloodworm, shrimps and high protein catfish pellets, they have no interest in cucumber. They are very shy, but once settled in the venture out to the open to feed and get less nervous as they get older. The oldest here is about 18 months and about 3\".

These little guys will soon be moving to their new home in a 4 foot tank. At the moment they are in an all too small 2 foot tank at 81 F with two powerheads for lots of flow in addition to a small internal and the juwel internal filter.

Great photos of crackingly expensive little fish. The second shot is excellent. If only you got the entire \"juwel\" logo in there you could nearly sell it to them for advertisement purposes. The strips in the last photo makes the fish look like a sweet!

Daragh,
Are you hoping to breed them in the future?
Seany

I don't gernerally like plecs so don't intend to keep any but these guys are just spectacular!! Thanks for sharing pics.
Maggie

Seany wrote:

Daragh,
Are you hoping to breed them in the future?
Seany

Definitely that's the plan, they are slow growers so that's at least 2 years away. They usually only spawn twice a year and they lay very feew eggs, 10 - 15 usually.

Great shots Daragh. The added info is great.
Shame you had to strip the tank to get the photos. I can only imagine the bedlam in the tank when it was striped.
Still one of my favorite fish ever since i seen one a few years back.

Darragh I would agree with tanks-alot re the second shot that could be a big for advertising. Spectacular shots again mate.

regards

My old man is breeding them. He reckons that they are the slowest growing fish he ever bred. Not particularely hard to breed.

@Darragh,
just make sure your pH stays above 6 or they'll all do the backstroke within hours. My dad found out the hard way. Thankfully only lost two fish when he put them into a tank with a pH of 5.8 transferring them from a tank with a pH of 6.2. There is a German L-46 forum and seemigly he isn't the only one with that experience