Alge And Plecos

[Tan DJ]

nmonks, in his pinned article about Alge eaters mentioned about Newbies being talked into buying an alge eater to control alge.

Unfortunately, I'm one of those Newbies

I had a serious alge problem that started a couple of months ago, so I asked at the local pet shop what was the best way to control alge, and they said "you should have one of these [pleco]", so me in my inocence bought 2. Cant remember exactly what sort, but they are a dark brown with small pale spots that get bigger the closer to the tail you get. They were both an inch long when I got them.

2 months later, and 1 is 3 inches and the other 2 1/2. But they seemed to be having no impact on the quantity of alge. I also noticed that they seemed to spend most of their time sucking the glass in places where the alge was only barely visible as gren dots on the glass and the places where the alge was 1/2 inch thick they didn't seem to touch. Then my 2 clown loaches died, followed by an explosion in snails.

It was after this that I found out that I should be testing for nitrate, so I went and bought a test kit which had a range of 0 - 160, and when I tested the water, it was definity right at the high end of the scale. Now for the past month, I have been doing a 1/2 water change every week, and the Nitrate is now down to around 40.

BUT I have noticed that the alge quantity is reducing.

At the current rate, there will probably soon be no alge left.

My question is, what do I need to do for the diet of my pleco's as the alge disapears? I haven't been getting them anything at the moment, as I thought their diet was alge, but after reading other posts on this forum, it appears that different plecos have different dietry requirements.

Currently there is no wood in my tank.

Any pointers greatly appreciated.

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

Plecs can be fed on Cucumber (mine love it and go into a feeding frenzy when I add some to the tank) Leave it as a whole slice or chunk and weigh down with lead weight.
They also eat peas (pop centre out of outer skin).
You can buy dried algae wafers in most aquatic shops. They will like these too.


By the way your high Nitrate was almost certainly the cause of your algae problem.

Hope this helps

 

[Miss Wiggle]

it depends on the plec what you need to feed them, can you post a pic so we can identify them, sounds suspisciously like common's too me in which case i hope you've got a big tank, they can easily reach 2 foot long! you'd need a 4x2x2 tank just to house 1 of them! Don't panic immediately, not all plecs get that big, get an ID on them first and take it from there. You can buy algae wafers and they also like plenty of greens, put some shelled pease or cucmber in the tank for them. Some plecs (like panaques) also need some bogwood in they're diet.

So yeah, try and get a pic or ID, if you can't get a pic of yours put plec into google image search and when you find something that looks like it post that

 

[Tan DJ]

I've been trying to photograph my fish and am having great trouble getting good photo's of my plecs. Anyone got any good ideas about how to photograph fish?

 

[Tan DJ]

Ha, I was just browsing one of the other threads about how to keep cucumber down, and there was a link to an ebay auction, which had this photo:

My plecs look a lot like the one on the right. Hope this is good enough for an ID.

Cheers,

Tan DJ

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

Im pretty sure those are Bristle nose Plecs.

 

[Tan DJ]

Yay, one of my plec's finaly was still enough to get a good photo:

So, anyone able to ID it for me?

Cheers,
Tan DJ