Tank Talk Magazine December 2009 | Page 7

7

Breeding Albino Bristlenose

TopAz © 2009

By Christine Morton

Introduction
Breeding albino bristle nose (Ancistrus cf cirrhosus) is much the same as other Ancistrus
species.
Make sure you have a male and female, that are mature enough to breed , put them in a
suitable tank with suitable water, be patient and the rest will come naturally.
Sometimes, things don't always work out the way they are planned, and things don't flow
as naturally as you would expect.
The following information is a personal account of a not so natural albino breeding
experience.

In the beginning ...
I started with simply trying keep this species, happy, healthy, and alive. Most of the original
specimens that I could afford were only of the 2-3cm size.
I ended up only buying a few (3) from a breeder I knew to see if I could even sustain them. I
lost all but one ( I put that down to a lack of proper maintainence at the time). The remaining albino that I had, spent a rather lonely year inhabiting a rather small tank all by it lonesome and was nearly forgotten.
After a while I got to wondering about it and started to pay more attention to it. By this stage
the fish could be identified as a male easily, and was not far off a decent breeding size. It
was decided (by me) that this male albino should have a female.
The pickings were slim at the LFSs in the area, hardly any albinos at all for sale, but I eventually found some small ones (4cm). After a long period of careful observation I picked the
only albino I could afford to take home that day.
A month after buying the little albino I decided to move back to
Canberra (from Brisbane), so everything was packed up and flown
down including the 2 albinos.
A little while after the move was over and the albinos had settled
into their new homes, I noticed with considerable joy that the little
albino I had selected those many months ago was indeed a female.

TopAz © 2009