Lamprologus Ocellatus (Shelly) breeding (bulldozing) photo log

[John58Ford]

So on the 12th I picked up a few ocy from another member, and this will be the photo journey of a pair (maybe trio) going through their own bulldozing process to (hopefully) start a colony.

Spoiler: Tank set up

Throughout this log I will update as adjustments are made to the set up but here's the basics:
44 gallon pent corner
18"x10"x2.5" 30ppi faux corner matten
530 GPH pump turned to minimum flow pushing dual rain bars across the top and down the front flow pattern.
3" deep argonite mixed with hth PFS.
A bunch of escargot shells, some plants, super cool rocks.
Moving from seachem buffers to diy mix with water changes.

Reference full tank photo on day 5, clear water, calcium and magnesium buffer precipitate still on plants, feeding.


Day 4: Breeding behavior starts.
Female flashing fins and colors near entrance of a shell:



Alpha noticed and follows:


They were in and out of this shell all day together.

Day 5:
Female guarding shell, burying entrance.

Spoiler: Tank politics and combatant (trio?) theory

I suspect this to be a trio, notice the other two shells being buried near by. There is a smaller (suspected) female burying the other two and coming out occasionally to make displays. In one days time these two other shells have gone from fully exposed to 1/3 buried. My other Shell dweller colony has buried the shells until there is just a funnel of sand into the mouth of the shell, I think this is when they feel the safest. I believe her to be female as the alpha is now on patrol in this front right corner and chasing the others away. In the group there is another large female that has taken the back right near the filter, two smaller fish have not claimed any territory. I believe them to be young males and as such will not take territory until mature enough to fight for it. The Calvus has taken over the cave zone I set up for him in the back left. I believe this to be why the alpha zone is in the front right, and nothing is set up in the front left yet.

 

[sir_keith]

Super cool; this is going to be fun!

 

[sir_keith]

There is a really interesting article entitled 'Mating and Parental Care in Lake Tanganyika's Cichlids' that was published by Kristina Sefc from Graz in the International Journal of Evolutionary Biology in 2011. It summarizes a large amount of work on the mating systems of these fascinating fishes, and is available online, here- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3142683/. Here is an excerpt on the shell dwellers, and if you want more, the article contains 219 references to other studies. A veritable treasure trove of information!

​

 

[DMD123]

@John58Ford, that's awesome, they wasted no time at all!

 

[John58Ford]

Day 6: they have been seemingly breeding in the first shell but have now rolled 3 others into position.

Day 7: no one home at base camp but they started burying/fortifying the entrance to the original shell, rolling it towards the glass a bit.

They are also working on the center rear zone now:

As far as I have read and observed the goal with these shell hotels is to narrow the entrance enough they can get in there, but no larger predators will fit. I like watching the tank change shape, one of my favorite aspects of shell dwellers.

 

[sir_keith]

...I like watching the tank change shape, one of my favorite aspects of shell dwellers...

Same here. Cichlids are pretty, but the real reason they are so popular is because they are so interesting. Given the appropriate environment, many of them will engage in species-typical behaviors similar to those they display in the wild, and the digging/courting/breeding behaviors of the Tanganyikan shell dwellers are most entertaining. For example, here is my young N. multifasciatus colony some time ago, when they were first setting up house; they've already rearranged the entire substrate, burying most of the shells in the tank in the process. They eventually set up a number of distinct breeding foci.



For an extra level of fun, you can keep them with another species with whom they share the biotope in the lake. Here is the same tank much later; after the addition of 10 Julidochromos ornatus. The Julies eventually resolved into 3 breeding pairs, one of whom set up a breeding colony at the left end of the tank. I will have some of their progeny available this summer. And as an interesting side note: some of the multi's are breeding in rock caves, and some of the ornatus are breeding in shells.

 

[John58Ford]

The smaller female is working on the shell behind the rock in the corner we have been watching:

Spoiler: Nerdy buffer observations

Buffer talk: my other little Shell*ie* tank is significantly over stocked as they have fully colonized (50 gallons of fish in a 10 gallon hat), this leads to significant nitrate production which of course requires heavy conversion (usage)of carbonate buffers. It is also very heavily planted, utilizing high amounts of magnesium, potassium, calcium, nitrogen, and phosphate. I use a diy buffer blend in this tank and do just over 50% water changes for net log reduction weekly to bi-weekly. This tank gets diy buffers that take it up to 22 GH(hardness in degrees), 18 kH(carbonate hardness in degrees), netting 8.6 pH. After 7 days, it usually produces an excess (not used by plants so it's measurable) 20 ppm nitrate. This in addition to usage by plants brings pH to 8.4, 15kh, 21 GH.

When I set up the very understocked pent, I went beyond recommended (I have soft spring water) with the seachem cichlid lake salt to get to "Tanganyika" according to the packaging which is only 14 dgh, it brought my pH up to 7.8. I then added the full recommended amount of seachem Tang buffer for 44 gallons, this got me over the 8.8 testing range and for the moment read 18gh, 25 kH. This did lead to some precipitation of buffer as there was obviously too much of something. I have no idea what (thanks seachem for listing ingredients..) in 7 days I have accumulated 5ppm nitrate, the plants are not adjusted to the root damage so there was very little uptake, I believe less than 50%. In these 6 days the tank has dropped to 15 dgh, 10dkh, 7.8 pH. This to me was very interesting as it even has argonite, which none of my other tanks do, so it's unlikely that there was significant ionization/collecting of carbonates in the substrate. To be continued.

 

[sir_keith]

Not to be picky here, but these little Tanganyikans are called 'shellie' (s) or 'shellies' (p). Shelly was a girl you dated in high school.

 

[DMD123]

BUMP!

@John58Ford, any updates on the shellies?

 

[John58Ford]

BUMP!

@John58Ford, any updates on the shellies?

There are some, nothing as exciting as I was hoping though, I'll get some pics when the lights come on. A warning though, these guys like meat too much, my cleaner snails have been having a hard time colonizing. Combined with the iron (listed) and phosphate (not listed on the bottle but tests positive @ .5 ppm above source) source in the seachem buffers, there's quite a bit of red dust (dead green dust) on the leaves and shell tops. The snails that survive are loving life, but most of them aren't surviving. The mystery snails however have adapted well and seem to be healthy, they're just too big to really do the job alone.

 

[John58Ford]

Day 18:

homestead one (front right) isn't being watched after by the female anymore, the theoretical alpha is still very protective though he swims over and flares at the phone when I take pictures even.



The shell behind the rock was abandoned but then they spent some time building homestead 2, front left.


And they have somehow evicted the Calvus from his rock cave and started homestead 3, back left. This is where the larger female is currently excavating.


The poor little snails are like the portrayal of the workers of Chernobyl's roof, here's one trying to clean a leaf before surely being eaten by one of the monsters that lives in here with him:


I'm going about this tank the same way I have with my others, slow natural balance, no hands flipping stuff over, no tooth brushes, just what it takes to get it right. Sometimes it takes a while to find the right tools for a job. I introduced 50+ ramshorn into the right side of the tank last week as well as an adult and a juvenile mystery. So far they have done ok on the right side but the left and center are still pretty rusty looking.

 

[John58Ford]

Took a few more shots last night, tried to color match them a bit as the current lighting and poor camera skills are causing really washed out shots at substrate level, there's not enough blue or yellow showing even after adjustments if the substrate is near the subject. Here's the front left corner, smaller female trying to bring the male down.

Spoiler: How much can a snail clean before being eaten?

as seen yesterday vs today side by side, it looks like one of them cleaned the leaf immediately closer too, but in yesterday's shot you couldn't see as much of it.

 

[John58Ford]

Here are the same shells from the above post (front left), 4 days later. It's the same presumed female in this shot that was seen poking in and out of the shell last week. She has dug a second shell down into position and fortified the entrance to the one I believe she is trying to lay eggs in.

Spoiler: For those curious about the progress of the snails

Darn hard workers and under appreciated heroes of the naturalistic aquascape.

There should be a self leveling population boom after this initial clean up (I'm sure there are eggs) but between the predatory fish and the introduction of snails with better armor it should level out very quickly. I have found that starting at pea size, mystery snails are able to sustain the abuse of these fish reliably; I have been adapting a couple generations to the water with my other Shellie tank and they are doing extremely well. The shells a solid dark yellow and not growing too quickly which could cause fragility.

 

[John58Ford]

Still trying to figure out how to photograph this one with the lights being as bad as they are. Don't worry, I'm working on a solution but the pent layout and depth is a bit unique.
Here are some overall shots with locked ISO to compare roughly to the first shots.

Front right

Front left

Spoiler: snails out for morning rounds

they come out the first few hours of light it seems like. Now that most of the hard work is done it seems like the tank is looking better every day. The half dead leaf to the right on this plant had grown out of the water in the 10 I took this cutting from, I'll probably try and snip it after this new leaf unrolls, the snails have better things to do.

 

[John58Ford]

4 weeks in, no babies that I have seen yet but plenty of bulldozing. I spent a few days away this week and came home to a balanced (self cleaning, high clarity)tank, so that's exciting. I've also figured out how to work with the lights so here it is as it sits currently.

 

[John58Ford]

Day 41(?):
Tank is looking hot. Days since vacuuming or having hands in tank: ~37. Last water change 12 days ago, current pH 8.2.

Let's play where's waldo:

Spoiler: Answers

Yesterday I noticed the Inkfin in the right front corner looking a bit banged up and pale, he perked up with some food and I didn't see any babies. Today it all made sense. Homestead 2 and 3 both have a dozen or so little fry running around, it's just pretty dang hard to get them in focus. Here's hoping Calvin the Calvus doesn't eat them all.

 

[DMD123]

AWESOME! Congrats on the spawning. The Calvus was always so chill and calm but he is a natural predator to the fry so Im sure he is going to get beat on unless he stays far away. I was pretty surprised how territorial and aggressive the big male Occi could be and that was without fry to protect.

 

[John58Ford]

They're still so small they blend in too well with the large grain sand but I can get them to stand out a little against the shell as a background. The mother fish gets pretty defensive even though my hand and camera are outside the tank. Easiest way here is to count the eyeballs.

 

[fishguy1978]

That's super cool.

 

[Betty]

Congrats. Those babies are so cute. What are you feeding them?