Social/natural plec behaviour?

[Bradb]

Hi on various other forums I hear of plecos in general becoming more and more active/visable when kept in groups in particular the smaller sp.
Is this true? does anyone have any experience with this happening in their tanks?

[Bas Pels]

I witnessed it with L75. Day active in quarantaine, until I seperated them into their final tanks. Soon after plcing them thei, I had problems with deseases, and they perished

My Pt gibbyceps, however, were invicible their first year (I got them at 7 cm) having grown to 17 cm in the mean time. This has happened before with an earlier group

[Bradb]

Anyone else have plecos that are day active when in groups?
Or strangly social, I'v read that most plecos are active because they are 'monitoring' thier territory?

[Shane]

Only a handful of loricariids are "social" in the sense that they are found naturally in groups. By and large this behavior is restricted to the Hypoptopominae (i.e. Otocinclus and their kin). I have seen underwater footage of huge groups of Hypostomus taken in Texas rivers, but am unsure if this type of behavior occurs in their native range. For most of the larger spp males will protect a fixed territory while females will move freely over a large area.
The negative side of this is that gill net fishing (a common practice in Amazonas) hits the females particularly hard. I have never done a scientific count, but have noticed that females make up most of the catch. This seems to be particularly true with Ancistrus where males guard a very small territory and do not move around much.
-Shane

[apistomaster]

Social behavior may be broadly defined.
I found when I kept about 6-7 each Hypancistrus L66, Hypancistrus L333 and Peckoltia L134 in a planted discus tank they would usually openly feed on sinking food pellets and frozen blood worms with the Discus and would chase each other around a lot as they competed for food. It could become quite a busy scene but once the food was gone the plecos made themselves fairly scarce. There was no shortage of hiding places for the plecos.