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Pleco help from experienced keepers.

olzkool

Members
First off, I admittedly know nothing about plecos. My only experience is I have about 30 or so bn plecos scattered through my tanks as diatom controllers, and they are brown algae devouring machines. All are very healthy and not shy in the least. I have never lost a single one.

I decided I would like to keep some fancier plecos in my show tanks upstairs. I have been looking for fancy plecos that can handle higher ph. I run typical malawi numbers for ph, kh, gh. ph is around 8.2. I also run 1tsp of salt and 1 tbls of epsom per 5 gal. Definitely not ideal for South American Plecos. For my first attempt (about a month ago) I added a young 3-4" emporer/flash pleco to my all male peacock/hap tank. So far so good. He rarely comes out, but during spot checks, looks healthy and fat. I may have not handled his acclimation very well, and probably just got lucky. All I did was put him in quarantine tank with equal parameters for a week, then dumped him in. I just got a really nice pair of Green phantoms and would like to give them a shot. Since buying them I have done a lot of reading on the web. After reading countless articles and forums on the subject, I am a little confused. Some say no way can you keep fancy plecos in a rift setup, others say they have done it with no problems. Some just dump them in, others spend over a month introducing them gradually to rift parameters. I want to be successful keeping these guys in my show tank, but don't want to compromise the plecos life in doing so. If it works I would like to get some different ones. If you guys/girls advise against it, I will just keep these guys in the neutral tank they are in. Thanks a lot for your help.
 

Acpape0

Members
I keep a gold nugget in my rift tank with high ph with no issues.. I am pretty sure frank keeps his in one also. I guess the sensitivity depends on the type of pleco but I have had no issues. In general the prettier the pleco is the more it is going to hide ( my experience) I would acclimate slowly but I believe a consistent ph is more important than any particular level. My gold nugget pleco means more to me than any fish in my show tank


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olzkool

Members
Thanks. According to what i have read it seems like the emporer and green phantoms should do ok. I wanted to get some more if this works out. I liked the blue phantom and vampire but they may not do well with higher ph. I see you have had success with a gold nugget. Any other suggestions on species from anyone?
 

HoleyRockofTex

CCA Members
My dad loves plecos but has an african cichlids tank (Malawi). He keeps with no problem at all king tiger (L333), Queen Arabesque (L260) Gold nuggets (L177, L081 (Orange Seam Pleco), L018/85), Blue and green Phantoms (L128, L200), royal plecos (L27, L191), inspector (L201), snowball (L142) and a bunch more. Remember that most plecos require wood in the tank to help with digestion or as their food source like the royal pleco. Also do not go in with a plan of breeding them in that tank as it will not happen.
 

frankoq

Members
As Adam said, I have had no issues with my gold nugget.
My PH is at 8 - 8.2 and he is fine. I do have driftwood in the tank and he likes to spend time on it.
I also have a bn pleco in the same tank and he is doing good too.
 

olzkool

Members
Anyone know of a good source for driftwood that has already been cured or have any that has been in a tank for a while? I want a couple small pieces for them but do not want the tannins to make my water yellow.
 

jonclark96

Past CCA President
If you boil the driftwood before putting it in your tank, you can get a lot of the tannins out. If time isn't an issue, you can soak the wood in a Rubbermaid in the garage with similar results.
 

neut

Members
Regarding plecos and haps/peacocks, I've had similar experiences to the previous comments. I've also kept a green phantom with Kapampa fronts (there was no driftwood in that tank and the green phantom stayed nice and fat and healthy). There's actually two different fish called green phantoms-- they look nearly identical, but are still two different fish, different genera. One of them from is the same genus as gold nuggets (Baryancistrus).

Not all plecos eat wood. It's one of those things a lot of people believe because they've seen it posted on a forum and then they repeat it for someone else to see on a forum, and then they repeat it... and eventually it's one of those things a lot of people believe that's not exactly true.

Driftwood can play host to a variety of algae, micro-critters, etc. so just about any plecos I've seen will graze on it, but doesn't mean they're eating the wood itself. Do some research and you'll find not all plecos necessarily even see driftwood in their wild habitat.

As a matter of fact, regarding the two green phantom species:
Neotropical Ichthyology Article
Baryancistrus demantoides was found exclusively among granite rocks in flowing water. Gut contents of two individuals consisted of a mixed brown organic and mineral matrix in which the only identifiable constituents were small tufts of filamentous algae attached to tiny grains of granite. Like most other ancistrins in the region, it likely feeds by scraping periphyton and indiscriminately ingesting both the sediment matrix deposited from the water column and the attached algae and benthic macroinvertebrates that often live within the sediment layers.
Hemiancistrus subviridis were most frequently encountered in cracks and interstitial spaces of granitic rocks in flow. Gut contents of all individuals consisted largely of small grained (<0.001 mm diameter) mineral/organic matrix resembling clay, with some larger (~1.0 mm diameter) grains resembling silica sand. Organic material embedded in matrix of one individual (AUM 39283) included pieces of a moss-like nonvascular plant (Bryophyta), intact mayfly larvae (Ephemeroptera), midge larvae (Chironomidae), unidentified fly larvae (Diptera), a clump of filamentous algae, a piece of lignified vascular plant, and an ingested tooth of presumed endogenous origin.
I've kept both types of green phantoms and I've seen no evidence at all they eat wood or need it in their tank. Periphyton is basically a matrix of of algae, cyanobacteria, microbes, etc, whether on submerged rock, wood, substrate, etc., and this is what a number of plecos are grazing on-- without eating the wood itself-- same as I've seen with green phantoms after keeping them several years.
 
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olzkool

Members
Awesome guys thanks. I'm getting some pyrogens tomorrow regardless. Can't believe I haven't been using it already. Neut, I was more concerned with the flash pleco and the wood but that's real good news I don't need it for the phantoms as I really didn't want wood in that tank.
 

neut

Members
Neut, I was more concerned with the flash pleco and the wood but that's real good news I don't need it for the phantoms as I really didn't want wood in that tank.
Yeah, I did kind of focus more on the thought of whether all plecos need wood in their diet than on flash plecos.

To my mind flash plecos are sort of mini royals and they are considered a wood eating species.

But then the science questions are do wood eating catfish actually digest, derive nutrients from, or require wood. From what I've read, it appears the answers are: 1) they do not (cannot) digest wood, 2) they do apparently derive nutrients from some of the products of wood decay, that is other microorganisms are active on the wood substrate and producing nutrients the plecos can use (sugars, etc, that they can also get from other vegetation), and 3) it's being debated whether they actually require wood.

I don't want to get too far off on a tangent, so here's just one pretty non-technical reference.
National Geographic
Other so-called suckermouth armored catfish species use their unique teeth to scrape organic material from the surfaces of submerged wood. But the new, as yet unnamed, species is among the dozen or so catfish species known to actually ingest wood.

Still, wood-eating catfish are largely unable to digest wood. Only associated organic material—such as algae, microscopic plants, animals, and other debris—gets absorbed into their bodies. The wood itself passes through the fish and is expelled as waste.
When you get deeper into it things quickly get complicated. For example, according to some of the science literature, IF the wood itself was somehow providing vital nutrients uniquely required by only some species of pleco that they can't get from any other source, then we'd have to look at the particular species of wood they're eating in the wild as providing something unique, something we're not likely to duplicate with locally collected or store bought driftwood.

Anyway, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind on how to keep wood eating plecos. I'm just saying the science on the subject is not as clear cut as some of the forum posts you see. Since I've I've successfully kept flash plecos (and royal plecos) with and without driftwood, for me it's not so much that I believe they require it as that it represents a natural part of their habitat.
 

npbarca

Members
I believe the Panaque genus requires wood in their diet. I've heard that they require wood in order to digest food.

I've had a clown pleco (Panaque genus) in tanks with and without driftwood. I hadn't heard that panaques need wood, so all of the ones in tanks without wood died. Now with the ancistrus, I've had them with and without driftwood, and they always did fine.
 

neut

Members
No question they ingest wood, digestion is the thing that interests me as something scientists are still studying and which some studies have brought into question:
http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UFE0023785/00001
Unlike many other wood-eating animals (e.g., termites, beavers), these fishes consume decaying wood in aquatic systems; decaying wood is in the process of being degraded by microbes, which produce soluble degradation products (e.g., beta-glucosides) that the fish can actually digest and assimilate. Thus, rather than harboring endosymbiotic microorganisms to digest wood fiber within their guts, the fish rely on microbial decomposition occurring in the environment. In this vein, the wood-eating catfishes are actually detritivores like so many other loricariid catfishes.

I see this as a sort of "stay tuned" situation while scientists are still studying it and, like a lot of things in science, are not in agreement. But I find this interesting:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2762535/
The fishes consumed 2–5% of their body mass (on a wet weight basis) in wood per day, but were not thriving on it, as P. nigrolineatus lost 1.8 ± 0.15% of their body mass over the course of the experiment, and Pt. disjunctivus lost 8.4 ± 0.81% of their body mass. This stands in contrast to a 41% mass gain by Pt. disjunctivus on an algal diet in the laboratory
the fishes pass wood through the gut too quickly (<4 h) for microbial digestion of cellulose; and the fishes do not retain small particles anywhere along their digestive tract. Furthermore, the catfishes were unable to digest wood and thrive on it in the laboratory. Each of these components would be expected to be the opposite in an animal that digests wood via an endosymbiotic community of microbes living in their GI tract.

From what I've read it appears to me the wood provides the raw material for a bio-community that is either digesting (or pre-digesting) wood fibers to produce the actual nutrients certain plecos are exploiting, or they're exploiting the bio-community itself, or both. Either way, it's apparently a nutrient poor food source, considering the amount they eat and how quickly it passes their digestive system, the strategy apparently being to consume mass quantities in order to compensate for the low nutritional benefit.

Not trying to argue anything here or trying to tell anyone who's experience tells them panaque type plecos need wood that they're wrong. In that respect I'm content to have my own opinion and see where the science ends up taking us. :)
 

olzkool

Members
Very interesting. I got some wood from the beach today. It's too big to boil in a pot so I'm going to take it to my shop and throw it in the sonic cleaner for a few runs to kill any organisms and hopefully remove the tannins. Headed to Lfs tomorrow night to get some purigen. Kinda sucks cause I just cleaned the fx5s last week.
 

Localzoo

Board of Directors
Very interesting. I got some wood from the beach today. It's too big to boil in a pot so I'm going to take it to my shop and throw it in the sonic cleaner for a few runs to kill any organisms and hopefully remove the tannins. Headed to Lfs tomorrow night to get some purigen. Kinda sucks cause I just cleaned the fx5s last week.

Nice! Sonic cleaner sounds like it will more than enough to clean it.


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