Need Help With My Pleco

[LiNa37]

Hi,
I'm new to this hobby. My mom recently bought me my first ever fish. I told her I wanted to own some fish and bought a tank, but I got a bit sidetracked with school and I didn't buy any fish, so I guess she got fed up with the tank just sitting there and she went out and bought me the fish. The problem is that she didn't ask me which kind I wanted (I was thinking guppies, since I read they're good for beginners). So one day out of the blue she just randomly showed up with 6 elegant rasbora, and 1 spotted sailfin pleco. I don't know anything about these fish! Please help.

I have a 10 gallon tank. The rasbora are doing fine, but I'm sort of worried about the pleco. I know that it's going to outgrow the tank, and I plan to get a bigger tank when it gets bigger, but right now it's only about 2 inches. So my first question is, can I keep it in the tank for a while or is it unacceptable for it to stay there? And how long before I should move it?
Also, I've been noticing some strange behaviour... at least I think it's strange. The pleco is swimming around in circles constantly during the day, when I have the light on. It's a very wide circle, from the top to the bottom, along the side wall of the tank. Is this normal? (I'm getting the water tested tomorrow, just in case.)

I've grown attached to the little guy, and I really don't want anything bad to happen to it.

TL;DR : 1) Should I keep my 2 inch pleco in my 10 gallon tank, and if yes, how long until I should move him to a bigger tank?
2) My pleco is swimming around in circles, is this normal?

 

[kporteo]

Is your tank cycled?
You really need to get your water test results onto this thread then someone can try and help you. Do you have a water test kit?

K

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Lina and Welcome to TFF!

First of all, let me say that we do see newcomers arrive with each of the several beginner problems you have from time to time and so have some experience helping with them. Let me also mention that expanding the picture beyond this first 10G and first batch of fish, perhaps the really lucky thing here for you is that you've stumbled across a really great hobbyist forum and if you choose to stick with it, tap into the information here and learn, it has the potential to really change the depth with which you enjoy the hobby.

OK, back to the here and now! You have three serious problems I'll choose to address: First, your mom has brought home 43 inches of (what will become) adult fish body for your 10G beginner tank (6x 6" elegants and 1x 7" pleco) which we would suggest has a maximum capacity of 10 inches of adult fish body. This is over 4 times what the tank can handle and even the 10 inch maximum capacity of the tank is not something we'd want a -beginner- to experience, at least ideally. So you are heavily "overstocked." This will quickly be unsustainable, even with the proper in-tank care.

Secondly, I would characterize the fact that it's your Mom's good will toward you having a nice tank that has brought this about and of course you don't want to hurt her feelings. We've seen this a number of times and it can be a socially tricky thing to get it worked out in everyone's best interest. Basically, for the fish to live properly, you're going to need to "re-home" (take back to LFS or to friends or give away on Craig's list etc.) them but you need to do this while taking in to account your's and your Mom's feelings!

Thirdly, and most urgently, you probably have the problem that K mentioned: Your 10G is likely not "cycled," meaning it is not actually yet a proper environment that can sustain fish such that they both live and don't get sick. If it is not cycled, it doesn't yet have a working "biofilter." Learning the skill of creating a working biofilter is one of the core beginner topics we try to share here in our TFF beginners section! (Unless it turns out you already know about this and are "cycled," you are in what we term a "Fish-In Cycling Situation.")

In a sense all 3 of these problems are tied together (because figuring out how to (in a socially acceptable manner) quickly lower the number of fish in the tank will have a huge effect on the overstocking/cycling problem. If you looked only at the "inch" guideline, your tank could theoretically handle one Pleco that was only going to grow to 7 inches eventually (but not the other fish) and you could keep just him and concentrate on him. But unfortunately, as you've seen with his circling behavior, he is not really in the right environment, the tank is too small, he is looking for more room and probably for wood. Or worse, he is reacting to too much of the poisons, ammonia and nitrite, that will be present after a few hours of him trying to respire in a non-cycled tank.

Until we know otherwise, you need to immediately perform a couple of large water changes and then daily changes until we can get water chemistry test results. You must use good technique: The water must be conditioned with a product that removes chlorine/chloramines from the new tap water and you much roughly temperature match the incoming new water (your hand is good enough for this!) You should use a gravel-cleaning siphon (but still do water changes even if you can't get this immediately) any time you water change because some of the harmful chemicals you are trying to remove hang out down in the substrate. The first water change should be about 75 or 80% of the water in the tank (basically leaving just enough for the fish to not start flopping around.) The second one (in the evening if you did the first in the morning) should be 50 to 75% (basically, large is good.) After this initial set of actions you should be ok with daily 50% changes until you can get a proper testing kit and figure out about cycling.

Am I off the mark, was cycling something you already knew? You can use the local fish shop for a first water test result but this is notoriously loaded with problems. What you really need is a good liquid-reagent based test kit. Most of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit, so that we can take away the unknowns about having somebody else test our water. (The members say these kits are available and cheaper on ebay and such, if that matters, or your LFS may have them.) We also need to know the media in your filter. Anyway, I'm sure the members will get started on your 3 problems and others!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[BethK]

WD has some good info there.

Just a quickie (sorry if it's been mentioned before but i'm blind as a bat today) but your 10 gal tank will not be big enough for a sail fin plec (but I think you already know that). But I would suggest he/she goes in a min. tank size of 180 ltrs, as they get to about 17-20" in length.

 

[waterdrop]

BethK may be right there, there are lot of things that get labeled with sailfin and plec and I was just taking a quick guess at one of the 7" max ones, it may very well be worse and be 20" max!! WD

 

[kizno1]

Does the plec look like this?
http/www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/species.php?species_id=148
If it does then they can grow to 18" not including tail so unless you have atleast a 6x2x2 with 8x4x4 being best i would rehome it as soon as possible.

 

[Rynofasho]

Ya, see if you can take back that plec and get a Bristlenose or something in it's place.

 

[LiNa37]

Hi guys, thanks for replying and sorry I took so long to get back to you.

I bought a completely new filter and did a 25% water change, and now my pleco is not swimming around in circles any more. I went to the fish store and got the water tested there, since they don't sell kits, and the other fish store that's in the area is too far away. The people there said that everything was good, but they didn't tell me anything other than that. I will try to go to the other fish store soon to buy the kit.

Kporteo, yes I did cycle the tank. I think the problem was that the filter I had wasn't working properly, since the odd behaviour went away once I bought a new one. Thanks for your help.

Waterdrop, thanks for all the information! But I read somewhere (I don't remember where now) that you're not supposed to do such large percentage water changes, because the fish as used to the water that they have and suddenly changing the make up of it would cause a huge shock to their system. Is this wrong?
Also, I use Prime SeaChem to dechlorinate the water before doing a water change, and leave it out for a while to make sure the temperature is right, and I siphon the gravel just before I do the water change.

I'm going to get a new tank really soon, around 40-50 gallons, I just need to save the money to buy it. So is it okay to keep the fish in 10 gallon tank for just a little bit longer, or should I just give them back? And is a 50 gallon tank big enough for their adult size, or should I buy a bigger one?

Thanks for your help.

BethK & kizno1, yes the pleco looks like the one in the picture, bu the people at the fish store said that the pleco would only grow to be half the size of the originals, like 10" max. Thanks for your help.

Rynofasho, I will most likely end up taking it back if it really can't stay in the tank, but I really don't want to, lol. I'll look into the Bristlenose just in case. Thanks for your help.

 

[LiNa37]

Oh! I forgot to ask, should I get the pleco some drift wood? I feed it algae wafers. Is that enough or should I give it anything more?

 

[LiNa37]

Um... not sure if anybody is even looking at this any more, but I thought I'd just let you know that he's in a 55g now.

 

[kporteo]

Ah thats good - i had visions of your pleco squished up against the tank glass
What are the dimensions of your 55g? Im saying this because I have a corner 55g tank and couldnt put a sailfin pleco in it as its not wide enough. Sometimes the size does matter rather than just the volume.

I take it this new tank is cycled too?

K

 

[waterdrop]

<...>
Waterdrop, thanks for all the information! But I read somewhere (I don't remember where now) that you're not supposed to do such large percentage water changes, because the fish as used to the water that they have and suddenly changing the make up of it would cause a huge shock to their system. Is this wrong?
Also, I use Prime SeaChem to dechlorinate the water before doing a water change, and leave it out for a while to make sure the temperature is right, and I siphon the gravel just before I do the water change.
<...>

Hi LiNa37, Water changes depend on the situation. If a fish is experiencing ammonia or nitrite(NO2) above about 0.25ppm (the actual number depends on pH but this is a good rough number that works for us on a broad scale) then that is much, much more stressful than anything that can be caused by a water change. It's kind of like if you were locked into a garage with a running automobile. It wouldn't really matter to you too much what temperature the fresh air was when someone finally opened the locked door, you'd just be glad to get free of the poison! Another reason it depends is that if one enounters an old tank that has been neglected, say perhaps the keeper knew nothing about the guideline of doing good weekly gravel-clean-water-changes and had just topped up the tank for a year or something.. then suddenly doing a large water change would indeed be very dangerous. The fish would doubtless experience a large change in mineral content from the high minerals that had built up to the lower mineral content of the sudden replacement water. That scenerio is called "old tank syndrome."

Old tank syndrome and the use of tap water as an all-purpose emergency help are two reasons why it is good to keep your tank water quite close in parameters to your tap water. Small water changes of 25% or less are fine when everything about your tank is running fine, but when bad things happen, large water changes can be lifesavers.

Prime comes highly recommended. This conditioner does all sorts of things right for beginners and is highly concentrated (it takes a much smaller dose to treat a given volume of water than many other products) so that lots of experienced aquarists just keep right on using it even after their first two or three beginner years. You can always take your notepad to the LFS and jot down the details found on the backs of the various pond conditioner products and then calculate things out to see if they would work out to a significant savings over Prime once you've had your tanks several years.. or perhaps if you had a fish room with dozens of tanks. It's possible some of these might work out to be cheaper and some of the other safety features might not be as needed in mature tanks. I even thought I might have seen a pond conditioner product from Seachem the other day, but I might have just been imagining it.

~~waterdrop~~