Spawning the Red Lizard Whiptail
by Charles Drew
From the Monthly Bulletin of the Hamilton Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com
Hemiloricaria
sp. 'Red' (L10a), is a small whiptail catfish. They only showed up in the USA about five
years ago and are much sought after by aquarists for their small size and bright red
colour. The common name is the Red Lizard Catfish. They come from the Rio Tocantins in
Brazil. There is controversy as to whether they are a colour morph of another species or a
distinct species of their own. They grow to about four inches in length. The female's
colour is a brilliant red and a mature male is more of a brownish red with little hairs
covering their heads and pectoral fins.
I first became aware of their
existence while cruising Aqua-Bid on the internet. My first impression was "Boy!
would I like to get some of those". But for a Canadian to have a fish shipped in is
pricey to say the least and the chance it will arrive alive and in a healthy condition is
not too great. In Oct. 2004 I went to the All Aquarium Catfish Convention in Laurel
Maryland. Guess who was in the sales room with a whole tank full of Red Lizard Catfish?
None other than Eric Bodrock of All Oddball Aquatics. (Incidentally he has an excellent
website with good information articles.) They were an inch and a half to about two inches
long. Eric told me that he could pretty well sex them and I left with two larger and two
smaller ones and they have grown to two adult pairs. They were given a ten gallon tank
with a sand bottom and several three quarter inch pieces of pipe to hide in.
As the next couple of months went
by the males grew to four inches and the females to three. They were getting fat and full
of spawn eating small carnivore pellets and frozen blood worms and brine shrimp. They had
a tiny Red Sea power filter to give them current and soft water. Finally, after checking
Eric's article I boosted the temperature to 82 F. This was the magic number because they
spawned two days later.
The number of eggs was small,
only a dozen, but they were about the size of a BB pellet. The male guarded the eggs in
the tube and I could see them darkening. Having spawned other whiptail cats I knew that
the females will eat the newly hatched fry that hatched on the seventh day. So I put my
thumb and finger over the ends of the tube and moved the male and eggs to another tank on
the sixth day. All went well but the eggs did not hatch until the tenth day. The fry were
about three eighths of an inch long and mottled. The male was removed to the spawning
tank.
Raising fry can sometimes prove
difficult. I read of some awful contraptions and devices that people have constructed to
raise lazy feeding fry. I opted to try Eric's much simpler method. I took a large size
Hydro Sponge Filter - one that I don't usually like because I feel that they are a little
too fine. I placed it in the ten gallon tank with the fry. When I fed them I swished the
live, newly hatched brine shrimp toward the filter. Some of course stuck to the sponge
held there by the air flow. The fry went onto the sponge and spent most of the next two
months there before looking for food on the bottom. From the twelve eggs, all of which
hatched, I now have ten, three month old fry up to two inches long. On two other occasions
I have seen a few eggs that were eventually eaten. I have also read since that the females
can be aggressive egg eaters. They may be out of their spawning season for now but next
season I hope they may prove more prolific.
|