I felt as the most lucky and honored person when I obtained 8 beautiful little Ancistrus Claro from Julian Dignal at the Lwelse days at Hannover last year. Still at the size of around 4-5cm I set them up in a tank to grow them on for at least a year. Good feeding and lots of water changes to keep them going strong and healthy.
Last sunday (12-1) they caught my attention because they were displaying breeding behavior. Here a short video:
https://youtu.be/1MxpS6AI8M8
The next morning I found my very first Claro eggs
They were all outside of the cave scattered around the tank. I collected 12 eggs in total and put them in an eggtumbler.
At day 4 the first wiggler hatched very premature, it died one day later. But this morning (day 7) 2 stronger fry hatched
Still got 2 more eggs that have to hatch. Not bad for me, this is my very first successful attempt at hatching eggs from day 0 myself
Tried many times with other species but always failed. So I'm very happy with this outcome so far! But I do hope the males will learn to keep the eggs inside the cave, I think that is the best way.
Video of the newly hatched fry:
https://youtu.be/0mBTu94F_qY
To be continued...