Lately I have been talking about my Bristlenose Plecos with a few people on here so I think a video is in order. I found some video footage of my BN pair in the early days when I started to breed them (about 2n a 1/2 years ago) and edited some into a little video.

The daddy BN is named Bush (my nephew named him) who I still have today and the female.....Mrs Bush
I thought Noddy and albinotiger might enjoy it or anyone who likes a video with baby fish in it

Hope you like..

Awww, look at all those CUTE little poop machines!

Thanks for sharing!

yes, you really pleased me and gave me a very good start of my weekend.
Daddy is the one at 1.20 in the cave?
man, that's so cool, and i will try this setup for sure in not a too long time!
I fr3@king really enjoyed that video!
Thanx for sharing.
If i were to use like say a 40Gl tank, how many of the outgrowing babies could stay in there for a while?
and for how long?

really cool vid, yes i will definately be buying a pair soon, as soon as i sough out the driftwood, how fast have they grown, from 1-6 inches.
adults at lfs cost between 25-35 wher little 2 inch ones cost around $5.
would it be smarter to buy 3-4 inch ones to start do you think?

very cool vid auscar. i liked the time lapse affect.

Nicki: "poop machines" is bit of an understatement the tube on the gravel vac would turn black while doing water changes. If I were to do it again I'd go with no substrate in the tank to keep make it easier to keep clean.

Noddy: Glad one of us had a good start to the weekend but thats another story...
Yep the Bush is the big one with the bristles guarding the cave, all the babies were too young to show bristles in the video. IMO a 40gal aquarium is plenty for a pair or 2. (you could do a common pair and an albino pair ). In my case I would have roughly 50 odd fry every month and it took about 3-4 months to grow them to a saleable size of 4cm. So factor in having approx 150 babies give or take, at any one time. I used a seperate growout tank with hefty water changes to keep them growing well. My mortality rate was very low most of the ones I lost got sucked into the filter I used a 'D' cave I purchased for breeding but I ended up making my own aswell. I can do a thread in the DIY section if you like.

albinotiger: They need to be around 1 year of age to breed so its up to you if you want to wait or not. I would get 2 large adults as I'd get an earlier return from selling the babies. Id say to grow to 6 inches it would take around 2 years or more. But I sold most of them off at 4-10cm.

cebosound: Thanks, that wasn't my intention but after watching it again it does have a time-lapse effect

Fantastic...What is that the young are eating? Celery?

Zuccini they love the stuff, which works well because I hate it!

Another video of my busy (overstocked) tank, this was taken a couple of days ago so its all current. Notice how I have removed all gravel to minimize water displacement and its just damn easy to keep clean now Im using a couple of pouches of Nitrazorb in my canister filter it seems to help a bit but I need to cut down the number of fish in here as Im doing about 85 percent water changes weekly with the current stocking level, the Convicts will be re-homed and I will sell a good amount of BNs to my LFS keeping the biggest ones. Maybe I should just buy a bigger tank

I love bristlenoses, I have about 8 myself - albino and common...would love to get a breeding pair of peppermints. I loved your footage..do you manage to offload many to your lfs? Is it worth breeding them? No problems getting those kids to eat their veggies! Thanks Shaz

Is it worth breeding them? IMO yes if you have a setup for them, if it's in a community tank probably not so much. The first time I sold babies it was to a pet store down the road I gave him 50 @$3.50ea

The second time I went to my LFS and asked if they wanted any and how much would they take, he replied I'll have 300 if you've got them plus he paid 4 bucks each the bigger ones give me $10 each. Of course you can sell them for $$$ through the paper/websites like gumtree etc but I don't like the idea of complete strangers walking through my house eye-ing off my stuff.

As a rough guess I'd say these guys have earnt me around $2000 in store credit when I was actively breeding them. Store credit obviously isn't cash but it makes sense if you frequent your LFS to buy things like food/conditioners/accessories and new fish..even whole tank setups basically for free to a hobbyist it can get you alot of stuff you normally buy anyway.

Now if only I could work out a way to get free water and electricity

They eat their veggies, but the bigger ones have a strange habit of rasping away at each others heads, the only part of them without Pleco armour. Some are stripped raw

Now who was it ,that was telling me lately, that he didn't consider himself a "pleco expert"?
Seeing this video makes it a definate, you are a pleco-expert!

Lovely footage, and breeding pleco's is surely one thing thats high on my "fish-things i want to do in the future" -list.
As well as keeping and breeding convicts.
You the man, Aus-car, and i'm glad you shared this with us.
It's so nice to see people like you enjoying and sharing different aspects of fishkeeping ,next to Oscarfishkeeping.

Very, very cool.
Thumbs up, mate!

And i wish you hadn't told us about the money, i'm seeing $$$$$ all over now!