Second fish species; Hypancistrus L201

Hypancistrus L201 eggs

This week, I started with the 9th series for Development of another catfish species; Hypancistrus L201. I expected that it would take a while before my fish would start breeding, but yesterday I discovered the first eggs. A big surprise, because my fish are still very small/young and I thought they were all male…

Another fish species?

After the first fish series of Ancistrus L159, I was faced with a dilemma; do I go for the aquarium hobby or my photography project? I don’t have unlimited space (and time) for an increasing number of fish tanks, so if a series of a specific species is completed, I have to decide whether I´ll keep this species and except that there won´t be any new series or if I choose to sell them, so I can breed and photograph a different and new kind of fish. This is a pretty difficult decision, because you are dealing with living beings and you can’t always be sure that you can find them a good home. On the other hand, my photography project is very important as well. If I can photograph the animals at home, it’s a lot easier to combine the project with my commercial work. In the end, the fish themselves helped me with this difficult decision; it turned out that they were very productive breeders but in my network/region there was little demand for their offspring, even though it was a very beautiful and rare species. In my opinion, you should only breed animals if you are reasonably sure you can find a good new home for the offspring. So I decided that it would be better if they would go to someone, who had a better chance for succeeding at finding them a home or had at least a lot more space to care for the fry.

New fish, male or female?

I already owned a Hypancistrus L201, so the most logical thing to do was to expand my group, so I bought three new fish. The most tricky part was to determine if I had males or females. With this species, It’s very hard to see the difference, especially with young fish. When they were completely used to their new surroundings and well fed, I photographed them. In the catfish Facebook group the general opinion was that it was very likely that the majority or even all of them were males. This was very discouraging, because if it’s so hard to recognize females, how was I suppose to find them and avoid buying even more males? And then suddenly there were some eggs. Apparently, at least one of the fish is a female after all. Hopefully the eggs will hatch and I can start following the fry’s development in a few days. To be continued…

An adult Hypancistrus L201

Visible odontodes is one of the characteristics of a male