Do pleco’s typically jump out of tanks???

I lost my pretty pleco… it must have learned to fly… it’s an open tank, but one side is covered to the ceiling, and the other 3 are all lined with terrestrial plants, that would make it difficult to escape, unless it learned to fly… I took all the caves apart today, even looked in the hob filter tanks, crawled around on the floor… no sign of him… I’m pretty bummed

Sorry you lost your fish. I almost lost a bristlenose because it held on to a piece of driftwood I removed. Found it at the bottom of the bucket when I was cleaning up. Just offer another suggestion to the flight one.

Yea I was gonna offer the same advice, a lot of times when you clean the tank they will be stuck to caves, driftwood, plants anything. They are master hiders and I wouldnt be surprised if he was still in your tank somewhere. Have you removed anything from your tank since the last time you saw him?

He mostly was under a large piece of driftwood in the center, the other resin caves it never spent much time in, rolled over the center piece several times look at it from all sides, and moved and inspected the resin caves… my zebra oto has been active ( unusually active) so something was different… feel pretty strongly it got out somehow… maybe was able to get on the lip of the tank, between plants, by using one of the Repashi sticks???

Amazing… I recoated the Repashi sticks, & it brought him out from wherever he was hiding

Magnum Man said:

Amazing… Repashi sticks brought him out from wherever he was hiding

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Glad you found him I hate losing a fish you dont actually see disappear.

I think that when a pleco is stuck to something, as soon as it get out of the water, They cannot open their gills to release the suction and remain stuck there even if they want to let go.

When I was breeding BristleNoses, I had to put back the decor in the water and shake them a bit for them to be able to release, if I held the piece out of the water they would stay there no matter how long it was and die if not returned in the water.

Magnum Man said:

I lost my pretty pleco… it must have learned to fly… it’s an open tank, but one side is covered to the ceiling, and the other 3 are all lined with terrestrial plants, that would make it difficult to escape, unless it learned to fly… I took all the caves apart today, even looked in the hob filter tanks, crawled around on the floor… no sign of him… I’m pretty bummed

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Hello Magnum. Plecos can be jumpers. The same thing happened to me a few years ago. i had a very large Pleco jump out of one of my tanks. He was out of the water for several hours by the time I found him. He was still alive, so I dropped him back into the water and he lived for some time afterwards. You just can't have any open areas above the tank. The fish will eventually jump at a bad time and at some crazy angle and escape.

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I have been keeping and breeding plecos for over 20 years. I started with bristlnose and then moved on mostly to Hypancistrus. But I did keep P. comptas well. I would guess that, between those born in my tanks and those I acquired, that I have easily had over 1,000 plecos pass through my tanks over the years. My last big sale 142 plecos went out.

In that time not a single one has ever jumped out of a tank. I have other fish do so, but not the plecos. However, I have had a few plecos jump back into a tank out of a net.

This is what I love about this hobby. The variety of it all. There are so few rules when it conmes to how we should keep our fish. All that really matters is we put them into an environment and water parameters which are what any given species needs.

Here are two universals I can offer when it comes to keeping fish. They must be in water with enough DO and they must be fed foods which meet their nutritional needs.