Breeding L134 Peckoltia Compta

L134 Peckoltia Compta also known as the Leopard Frog Pleco has a rich yellow colouring covered with brown/black bands over its entire body.

As juveniles, their bands are thicker all the way across. Once they start maturing the brown/black bands start separating and spitting into smaller lines. This is a good indication if you want to speculate on how mature your fish is.

More mature L134 plecos will have thin lines.

Sexing

Probably one of the easiest plecos to identify. Mature males will have sharp odontodes covering 3/4 of their tails. Whilst females won't have any. This is one of the clearest indications between a male and female for this species.

Another way to sex the L134 is by their vent. By looking at the under side of then ventral area males will have a V shape, but the females vent will be more rounded giving it a U shape.

Feeding

Being an omnivorous fish, the L134 would do best with a balanced mixed diet of proteins and veg. We have found they prefer a more protein heavy diet whilst having the veg element as an add-on to make sure they got all their nutrients.

We found the best results for growing and breeding the Leopard Frogs was to feed a protein rich food 4/7 days. Filled with 3/7 days for foods that contain some veg/greens.

Using products like the EBO Foods Spirulina Softgran and Spirulina Paste is an excellent way of providing your fish the greens it needs, It has a color-boosting effect on YELLOW fish. The high value of 350 mg of natural lutein protects and greatly enhances the yellow.

For a protein boost, feeding them EBO Seafood Softgran and Mussel Softgran helped them put on size and condition them for breeding.

Breeding

We kept 30 adult fish in a 4ft tank which consisted of 16 females and 14 males with plenty of filtration which kept the nitrates down. We were lucky that all our L134s were well behaved and there were no fights between any of the fish. For us a colony worked better than trios or pairs and at one point there were 4 males on eggs at one time. Temperature was set at 28deg Celsius with 1 sponge filter, and 1 internal filter creating water movement and surface agitation.

We did a large water change once a week, sometimes twice depending on my work schedule. Each water change was between 50-60%. Larger water changes help trigger the fish for breeding as well as temperature drops. At one point we dropped from 28deg to 24deg.

Raising Fry

Rearing and feeding the fry successfully is easy with L134. We fed them a combination of pastes to help them accept food easier with their small mouths. The Youngster Grow formula, Artemia Paste and Spirulina Paste allowed us to do so, providing us with successful and healthy fry.

L134 fry take around 7-8days for them to fully consume their eggsack. We like to wait an extra day just to make sure that its completely gone before feeding.

One product that definitely helped with raising all our fry is the Sealife Proaktiv powder. Its high in protein and amazing for babies with small mouths.

We feed all our fry twice a day. Morning and night, and make sure to remove any uneaten foods every time the next feeding session occurs. This helps keep the breeder box and their environment clean and help minimize any potential losses you may have.