PheonixKingZ - your reply was exactly what was in my head to write. How can it be that we both "have 8 in my 29g tank - they are all happy and healthy."
In your case you were referring to Neon Tetras I believe (I got caught up in all the popcorn action on this thread) while I was just getting around to responding to the pleco hater because I have 8 in my 29g tank and they are all happy and healthy. I bet he/she would REALLY hate one I have. As a baby he was born white, then he turned yellow and now he is brown, no bristles have come in yet so he is a she or its just too early to tell. Mine are all in a tank with a bunch of pissy rainbow fish. I saw a youtube special with Cory? and the man that's identified more Rainbow fish than anybody else in the world, (Frankly, now that I have some I don't know why he bothers). His entire basement is full of 10 and 20 gallon tanks of Rainbow fish. So I went online to a fishstore that takes particularly good photos of the fish they sell - so I strolled through their rainbow isle and bought a couple of dozen,
It's been about a 9 months or so and I have 12 left out of the original 24. I USED to have a file showing the history of every fish I've owned but Window corrupted it during an update - I'm still working on getting it back. They used to be in the tank with the DoJo Loaches which as I've been posting, has had off and on problems with White mold. In fact we changed the water last Friday and today is Wednesday and it just now turned cloudy again. It always happens fairly rapidly - over an hour or so. So one time the Rainbow fish were in there with the Dojo's who can be harmless but VERY annoying and the tank turned white and the Rainbows started dying. I grabbed a big net and caught the rest and moved them to a different tank, none have died yet - but I think the Rainbow fish which are very mildly aggressive compared to Dwarf Gourami stressed the Gourami out and they all starting dying one at a time - water was fine, they looked fine. I can never find a reason, My last Gourami died Sunday. Two days after a water change so can't blame that.
Does anybody besides me thing Rainbow fish are a boring species and not very intelligent? I do have 2 bright red males and 2 bright yellow females that are very nice the coloring on the other is so subtle you don't even notice it.