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Pleco's


Shrimp lady

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Does anyone keep Pleco's or have any success breeding them? I'm new to these but are VERY fastinated by them! Please share your experiences here...

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Bought 2 common bristle noses about 2 years ago. Had them with some African Shellie's. Water was not good for plecos (PH 8.2 GH about 16 KH about 14). Male disappeared under driftwood for 2 weeks and about 20 babies appeared.

This continued every 5-6 weeks till now. They're still in the same type of water. They eat pellets that fish miss. With the Shellie's, most were picked off. They're now with cyprichromis which don't eat anything larger than .5 mm. One tank has about 50 plecos. The other has over 65. Most of these are VEry small. Can't give enough away. Beware of what you ask for. Remember, if you're old enough, Uharu thought tribbles were cute.

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a year ago I got myself 2 Leopard Frog Plecos L-134. I must have got the pair during mating season cause they went at it quickly. I had about 12 baby pleco's. I got rid of all of them except for one. Plecos are not as easy to deal with like shrimplets.

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I have had alot of bristlenose and they are hardy, easy to keep and you just need to keep up with cleaning waste they produce on the bottom of tank. (the do produce more waste then shrimp or other fish, thats for sure)

 

Breeding is simple. All you need is a mature female and male , a cave and they should do the rest!

 

They also like to eat veggies like zucchini, french cut canned green beans (salt free and rinsed) , sweet potato...

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I have had alot of bristlenose and they are hardy, easy to keep and you just need to keep up with cleaning waste they produce on the bottom of tank. (the do produce more waste then shrimp or other fish, thats for sure)

 

Breeding is simple. All you need is a mature female and male , a cave and they should do the rest!

 

They also like to eat veggies like zucchini, french cut canned green beans (salt free and rinsed) , sweet potato...

Do you males get along ?

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Do you males get along ?

No they don't. When the males are full grown at about 1+ years old they have a face of bristles. Those males you should really keep only one per tank. If not, you will have some fighting and dominance going on. Best to keep one male. You can keep several females with one male.

 

They are very cool looking and definately fun to watch! 

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No they don't. When the males are full grown at about 1+ years old they have a face of bristles. Those males you should really keep only one per tank. If not, you will have some fighting and dominance going on. Best to keep one male. You can keep several females with one male.

 

They are very cool looking and definately fun to watch! 

 

I never had bristlenose but they are certainly interesting looking .

 

I don't know much about plecos but suspected that males would not get along because in area canals it seems like they are territorial .

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I got one for my first tank when I was 9, it died in 24 hours, so did the replacement. a few years later I tried again figuring I was more experienced, nope dead by dawn. My last attempt was a Striped Raphael Catfish, I may as well have dumped into into a deep fryer. Something about out well water killed bony fished dead. It was fantastic for malawian cichlids though (7-8PH and insanely hard. I know there was also copper from the blue crystals that formed on the tank).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I got one for my first tank when I was 9, it died in 24 hours, so did the replacement. a few years later I tried again figuring I was more experienced, nope dead by dawn. My last attempt was a Striped Raphael Catfish, I may as well have dumped into into a deep fryer. Something about out well water killed bony fished dead. It was fantastic for malawian cichlids though (7-8PH and insanely hard. I know there was also copper from the blue crystals that formed on the tank).

 

Could it be something in the well water such as the copper ?

 

Some types of plecos are bred here in Fish farms and the PH here is high

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  • 3 weeks later...

They're definitely *curvy*  :D  Not that they'd care what you call them as long as they can eat all day.  They get Repashy and fresh veggies.  And that picture was quite a few spawns ago.  Since then several hundred more, including long-fins and albinos (produced by brown parents).

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I've had a common bristlenose, which is apparently female, for about 6 months now. It was about 1 inch SL when I bought it and is a tick above 3 inches SL now. She eats algae pretty eagerly, but lives for the various veggies I put in the tank...mainly zucchini, broccoli stems, and the occasional carrot. She will eat algae wafers too, but gets pretty irked by the Corydoras habrosus and Blue Rams that want to munch on those as well.

 

Plecs are one of the animals that I feel are best kept one at a time (per tank), much like my prized dwarf puffer. Compatibility issues are far less likely when only one of a kind is kept. I'm sure in large tanks like the >100g mentioned earlier in this post, it's far less of a legitimate worry with so much space.

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  • 3 weeks later...

LFS for in some L134s and now I'm thinking that I will run plecos in the new tank (betta sorority tank/female betta dumping ground). These only get to 3-4" so I'd think they would be happy in a 60. Dluxeshrimps, did yours get territorial?

On the bad financial decisions side there is someone local selling zebras. So good looking. So cute. so AAAHhhhhh look at that price!!! That is salt/discus money!* Hopefully these are all sold by the time the tank is broken in. I wonder how easy they are to breed? Nothing to brighten your day like trying to save an endangered species from extinction... I should stop having these thoughts.

 

*Looking at this forum title it could also be considered top end shrimp money too.

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LFS for in some L134s and now I'm thinking that I will run plecos in the new tank (betta sorority tank/female betta dumping ground). These only get to 3-4" so I'd think they would be happy in a 60. Dluxeshrimps, did yours get territorial?

On the bad financial decisions side there is someone local selling zebras. So good looking. So cute. so AAAHhhhhh look at that price!!! That is salt/discus money!* Hopefully these are all sold by the time the tank is broken in. I wonder how easy they are to breed? Nothing to brighten your day like trying to save an endangered species from extinction... I should stop having these thoughts.

 

*Looking at this forum title it could also be considered top end shrimp money too.

BNs can be territorial. Not sure with other BNs because I've only had one. But she would chase off my hillstream loaches and otocinclus if they crossed paths.

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Anyone keep plecos with their shrimps? None of the plecos, even carnivorous plecs actively hunt/eat  livingshrimp right?

I can imagine plecos bulldozing into things and potentially crushing some shrimps in the process, does that indeed happen in anyone's experience?

I used to keep quite a few species of plecos, but that was before I got into planted tanks and shrimp tanks.

Regarding aggression/territorial disputes, they happen more when kept in small groups. Large breeding colony set ups, fighting doesn't happen as often. So yeah, for the average size tank, to avoid having pleco disputes (no matter the species), I would recommend just a single pleco, or possibly a breeding pair. Sure, a tank full of offspring with the parents are fine, at least until the young mature.

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Some of the big plecos will gladly eat your small fish so I suspect shrimp would be a tasty treat for them.

Anyone build their own caves? I'm thinking of fired earthenware or porcelain. A nice curved pile of tubes in each back corner of the tank and then grow moss on them.

 

 

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