Do you have a Plecostamus? Advise?

[Imalittleteapot]

Someone gave me one when they no longer wanted to mess with an aquarium. He was 5" long when he came to live in our outdoor pond in the spring, but grew to a hefty 12". We had to bring him indoors for the winter to live a new 30 gallon aquarium. They eat algae, so we bought him some algae tablets. Question is - how much is he supposed to eat? This is the ugliest ever fish that mostly hides, eats and poops up a storm.

[HawkerHurricane]

1. Very useful fish

Eat algae and fish poop, including thier own. Skip the tablets, he'll get enough to eat just getting the stuff the other fish leave and the algae on the tank walls.

[Imalittleteapot]

4. Thanks! nt

[Heddi]

7. They do not eat fish poop

no aquarium addition does--not even snails.

In fact, Pleco's aren't very useful in cleaning tanks because they produce just as much waste (poop) as they eat (algae, left over food).

Also, if your pleco is 12 inches long, a 30g aquarium is far too small for him.

Many pleco's grow to 3+ feet long. I would never keep a pleco in anything smaller than a 55g tank, and that's really pushing it.

[SimpleMan]

2. One or two tablets a day is plenty for that size fish. n/t

-

[Imalittleteapot]

5. So the 5 or 6 tabs he's been getting is a little much? Thanks.

[curse10]

3. One tablet should do

those big nasty fish create enough mess without feeding them too much :-)

[Imalittleteapot]

6. Thanks for info. We have been overfeeding Wiggles.

[jmowreader]

8. What? Are you people nuts? You're underfeeding your plecos!

Loricariid catfish, which are the genus that contains plecostomuses, whiptails and otocincluses, eat continuously--this because they're herbivores and they're generally pretty large for aquarium fish. I feed mine zucchini. A twelve-inch pleco isn't actually all that big; mine is fifteen and I've seen some that were larger.

I feed my sailfin pleco (this is probably what you have, because they're easy to breed in ponds in Florida) by cutting a zucchini in half lengthwise, sticking it on a fork and burying the fork handle in the gravel. He gets half a nine-inch zucchini every day and eats it all.

You may also want to get him a larger tank, or trade him in on a smaller pleco. A good one if you don't want a four-foot aquarium is an Ancistrus. This is the ugliest fish that ever lived--Ancistrus are also called "bristlenose" or "bushynose" plecos, because of the cephalic tentacles growing on their snouts. The pleco you have needs at least a 55-gallon aquarium, 75 is better, and if I had the floor strength I'd put mine in a 125. Make sure the aquarium is glass; any Loricariid can scratch the hell out of an acrylic tank. Big Panaques (at least a foot long) go one better--they can chew their way out of an acrylic tank, with obvious negative consequences for your floor, and your Panaque.

A real pretty pleco is the Zebra--Hypancistrus zebra. It's a black-and-white striped fish that only gets about five inches long.

The Pleco I'm going to buy if I ever hit the Powerball is a Royal Pleco, Panaque nigrolineatus. These eat wood. They also have only seven plates in their armor--the smallest number of any pleco--so they move kinda clumsily.

Mine is also completely fearless: he lives in a tank with five Jack Dempsey cichlids. The Jack Dempsey is supposed to be pretty aggressive, but the pleco is the boss in that tank. Mainly because he's two to three times the size of any other fish in the tank and, about once a day, will chase the Dempseys around the aquarium for the hell of it.

Check out http://www.planetcatfish.com; there is a Loricariid taxonomic chart to figure out what kind of pleco you have.