A big shout out to Brantley and Jodi Berry at Plecocaves.com! If you’re not familiar with their business, go visit their website – https://plecocaves.com/.
They are my go to for aquarium caves, but don’t let their name fool you. They make some great cichlid caves. In fact, they also do great custom work. They have worked with me in the past to produce some very specific caves for my fish. Recently, I asked Brantley to customize their standard mega bricks for my Julidochromis breeders. I wanted smaller openings in the brick. Yesterday, I received the custom order, and they look great. He had to improvise a little over what I asked due to some production issues, but these customized bricks are already doing exactly what I need. In fact, some of the smaller juveniles took to these caves within five minutes of inserting them in my 33g long.
If you read my previous posts titled Shelter for multiple Julidochromis broods and Cichlid fry shelter, you know that I also use travertine tile and PVC in my julie breeding tanks.
Because I tend to house multiple broods in my breeding tanks, it’s important to give juveniles and young adults somewhere to hide. Once reaching a certain size, they become a threat to the parents and will get picked off if they don’t have sufficient shelter. You can create your own caves many ways. Stacking rocks, ceramic tiles, and other objects are some popular methods. However, rocks and such can collect detritus over time. Unstacking and removing rocks and other stacked objects is tedious. Removing a single brick or two such as these is so much quicker and efficient.
For my dickfeldi especially, the openings in the normal mega bricks (see photo at the top) are just a bit too large to effectively shield the offspring. J. dickfeldi are one of the smaller julies, but the openings in the standard mega bricks are large enough to accommodate the adult females of this species, so I needed smaller openings. Adult females of other julie species, like regani, don’t present a problem with these standard caves because their adult females are too large to fit into the openings.