Plecos -- Part II
© Clifford J. Aliperti
A note on driftwood. Even if you buy it clean at the store (which is highly recommended over taking pieces from the wild), you'll want to submerge it in water for a good 48-72 hours prior to placing it in your tank. First, if your wood is dirty this will clean it up, second, if you go to place it in your tank dry the water pressure will pop it up immediately and either destroy your hood and lighting or give you a good smack in the face.
While my whiptail's been good, I did mention my experiences with run-of-the-mill Plecos have been poor. For instance I have a small twenty-gallon community tank with tetras, corys and some small African Frogs. I tried on three consecutive occasions to keep a Clown Pleco in that tank, and each time they would begin turning a shade of white before dying. My water tested well, the other fish were fine, no losses or observable stress. The little plecos just kept keeling over. There was driftwood in the tank, the tank was even planted with Amazon Swords and Anubias, so if they wanted a salad it was there for the taking. One of my local fish stores tried to tell me that while my water tested well in general, the floor of the tank was susceptible to higher ammonia rates thus causing the repeated Pleco deaths. This sounded like nonsense to me, but after three or four tries I decided to stop keeping the Plecos in this tank. I upped the number of Corys in the tank from four to eight and things have been fine ever since. Funny how the bottom-dwelling Corys aren't affected by the high ammonia on the tank floor! I now think that the Plecos I had purchased were suffering from starvation. This would not be the pet shops fault, as it is relatively common for these fish to go off food from the stress involved in transit from wild to pet shop to home. My only advice is to buy the chubbiest looking fellow in the tank when you make your own purchase.
About a year after the last of my chronic Pleco deaths I broke down and bought a six-inch specimen of one of the big boys. I have a sixty-five gallon I figured he would grow his way into, but at the time he went into one of my thirty-gallon long tanks. This tank houses a couple of mystery Acara (though I'm close to identifying them and will then do an article!). This pair of fish, which refuse to breed, killed anything I tried mixing with them. It started in other tanks as they wound their way through a Chocolate Cichlid and even a Pike Cichlid. They destroyed a Jack Dempsey in their own tank. But the Pleco, that's supposed to be the fish the cichlids don't mess with! They wear armor-like protection, the rays of their fins are sharp and send a clear message to all attackers--keep away! It worked for four days. He did a fine job keeping down the algae overload on that tank during those few days. On the fifth morning he lay upside down on the gravel, a pair of vicious sores laid into his cadaver, each about the size of the Acaras' mouths. So much for that idea.
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