Bn Pleco Aeration / Flow?

I bought 3 'blue eyed bristle nose pleco' 3 days ago.
I plan on getting 6 more of the red variety this week.
They are about 2" in size and I want to start them off in a new 20G long.

I put 2 into another 20G long community tank with a HOB & sponge filter.
I put 1 into my 10 gallon quarantine that has 2 platies and a ton of algae on the glass. but with only a 10G double sponge filter.
About 4 hours later I noticed the 1 in the 10G was not doing well and I moved it to the 20G but it didn't recover.

No ammonia / nitrite in the 10G but I had my air output for the sponge filter partially above the water.

I've seen people use sponges in breeder tanks for plecos before but after reading a bit more it seems they need good aeration/water flow.

I think this one died due to lack of oxygen.
How do people breed plecos with only a sponge filter?

 

Add air stones to their tanks. My babies love hanging out in the bubbles.

And they do need to be fed for the record. Algae should never be their primary diet.

What are your plans for these 9 plecos? Just curious!

 

Add air stones to their tanks. My babies love hanging out in the bubbles.

And they do need to be fed for the record. Algae should never be their primary diet.

What are your plans for these 9 plecos? Just curious!

I recently bought about 10 tanks at the petco sale, now i'm in the process of slowly setting them up.
Started with a 3x20L rack in the kitchen and I saw those amazing looking bn pleco at the LFS thursday and had to have them.
I randomly searched craigslist and found a local home breeder with red ones and now I'm even more into bn plecos.
I want to breed them and spread them to different tanks and eventually sell some.

I have wood for them and the sinking wafers, haven't seen them interested in them yet. Will do some veggies too eventually.

The 2 are happy in here so far, mostly staying attached upside down on the wood cave. (look closely under wood below anubias )

 

Cool. That will be fun. I've been breeding the blue eyed lemons for a couple years now. They are my fave.

If I were you I would not mix the 2 types because you'll just end up with a bunch of basic Browns.

 

Cool. That will be fun. I've been breeding the blue eyed lemons for a couple years now. They are my fave.

If I were you I would not mix the 2 types because you'll just end up with a bunch of basic Browns.

I was thinking about that.. If I get lucky and this is a M/F pair I will breed the yellow too but don't think I want to roll the dice on more unsexed yellow when I think I like the reds a bit better.

 

See....they love the bubbles

 

I looked at the breeders tank and he had about the same size or smaller worth of sponge with very little bubbles in his main breeding tank.
Maybe it was something else with that tank.

I bought 6, ones head looks slightly more tilted than the rest.
He said that any small ones with tiny bristle on their nose were going to be male.
I think my 2 yellows might be male.

yellow that clearly has bristles



tilted head

 

I've never seen a pleco with a head like that, I would stay away from breeding that one

 

I've never seen a pleco with a head like that, I would stay away from breeding that one

Maybe I can breed it out and call it the 'sock puppet' variety
I showed my wife and she called it shrek, later I thought about exchanging it and mentioned it to her. As I expected, we have to keep it.

 

I've never seen a pleco with a head like that, I would stay away from breeding that one

also do you agree that yellow one in first pic is male?

 

Yes, the females won't have bristles or will only be on the sides of their mouths