High PH pleco ?

[Syno Rey]

Is there plecos that would do great with high ph ? I want one for my african cichlid tank to take care of the algae. Any suggestions ?

[MatsP]

Common bristlenose,

Ancistrus cf_cirrhosus

does well in hard/alkaline water.

Most of the fancier ones prefer a lower pH, and many don't do well with algae-cleaning anyways.

I did a cat-eLog search for fish suitable for pH 8.5, and it lists only L204, which is more of a wood-eater than an algae-eater. Going down to pH 8 gives a few more species, but most of those are unsuitable or hard to find.

--
Mats

[Syno Rey]

Thanks for the info !

[apistomaster]

Can't go wrong with a common Ancistrus cf. cirrhosus but if you want something more exotic then try

Panaque sp(l204)

.

[sidguppy]

no Panaque's in Rift tanks please!

Panaque's need wood to chew; Rift cichlids cannot cope with the chemicals (tannins) that leak out of bogwood
wich causes a parameter-conflict right there.

as a result of this diet, Panaque's do not like a high pH!
they like to eat wood, wood causes the water to be acidic and hence the Panaque has evolved to be a fish of the soft and acidic water biotope.

the fact that it doesn't die right away in a Rift tank says something about the toughness of Panaque's; but it isfar from ideal and the fish itself will not be happy.


there are a few other Pleco's wich can cope with the hard, alkaline water of the Rift wich are far more suitable.

first:

Hypostomus robinii

this particular species is from Trinidad and it can and does cope with hardiness and salinity both.
it is also a small Hypostomus as Hypostomus go; 7-8" TL adult size
it is fairly common in the trade the last 2 years.

second, there's old stalwart

Hypostomus plecostomus

this one grows bigger (up to 1 foot).
still that's just half the adult size of Pterygoplichthys pardalis, the Common plec
it is a slow grower, and often stays just 8-10" for a long time.
this is 1 tough pleco.....you'd need a weapon of mass distraction to kill it; I'd call it "100% cichlid proof"!

then there is the more uncommon

Hypostomus punctatus

this one looks a lot like the one above, but it is slightly smaller (10" or so) and also a bitmore contrasting and shorter in build.

these 3 are very adaptable species that canbe kept in a roomy tank and most important: they cope with the high pH of the Rift tanks with ease.

[Richard B]

Agree with Sid - don't add fancy plecos to rift tanks - however if you are setting up a more convential tank & happen to have hard water this is a different issue - can you enlighten us?

[MatsP]

I want one for my african cichlid tank to take care of the algae.

The above states quite clearly what the purpose of this query is.

--
Mats

[Richard B]

yes agreed Mats & it does point to a rift tank although there is a slim possibility of african non-rifts - i'd like to be 100% sure

[sidguppy]

another reason not to get a Panaque then

Panaque's are bad sloppy algae eaters, but excellent illusionists

now you have a tank full of bogwood

now you got an empty tank full of tiny brown turds


smaller species like the ones that are related to Panaque maccus are also very good at making foliage disappear; they can and do rip up Anubias with ease.

Hypostomus leaves your plants in 1 pice and are very very good at cleaning wood, stones and glass!

[apistomaster]

From another post I made about wood that is relevant here:
Tannins and lignans are some of the phytochemicals which may be released from woods, especially wood which has cured for some time in an anoxic environment.
Lignan is such a weak acid that to make aquarium water more acidic would hardly be noticeable unless the water is pure as in RO water. Most tap water has sufficient buffering capacity that the wood will not have much effect on the pH.
Both tannic acids and lignans are each a group of chemicals found in so-called black water, typically very soft and acidic water. While wood contributes a fraction of the sources of chemicals that give black water it's name and chemistry. The primary cause of black water is the percolation and longer retention periods of rain water through very thick and extremely large areas(often thousands of square kilometers) of decaying leaf litter, peat and not so much of wood as a percentage of the composting surface layer.
There is an association of these chemicals in aquarists' minds with black water.

This contrasts considerably with the use of relatively small amounts of "seasoned" wood kept in an aquarium and it's effect on the pH of aquarium water. That wood may release enough lignans and tannins to influence the color of the water but the relationship between the color of water induced by wood in not directly proportional to the ability of the wood to influence the pH.
We know that peat has the ability to lower the pH and even function as an ion exchange media but it is very dependent of the source/type/quantity of peat and the water must have little to no KH to produce much change. In this respect, it is much more influential than wood per unit of mass. To put it another way, it is well know that it can take a prohibitively large amount of peat filtration to soften and acidify tap water of even only moderate hardness. The surface area available of the peat particles is many orders of magnitude greater than surface area of some pieces of wood in a fish tank.

I decided to write this as food for thought because in this and other tropical fish fora I keep reading posts by aquarists which seem to imply attributes of the influence wood in aquaria has on pH and hardness than it deserves.
There are other properties that decaying dead plant matter can impart to aquarium water in a positive way for breeders of black water fishes due probably to the fundamental molecular structure of these phytochemicals to estrogen precursors but wood is not nearly as useful in this regards as peat and/or large amounts of leaf litter. The type of plants that compose this peat and/or leaf litter matters a great deal. The ubiquitous Tropical Almond Tree, Terminalia catappa, is one of the better known sources of the tannins and lignins now in wide use in the hobby as a material to make already very soft water chemistry more similar to naturally occurring black waters but we tend to use the leaves of this plant not it's wood

[Syno Rey]

Thanks for all info !!! Yes it is a african rift lake setup with malawai Mbuna cichlids. I do have some driftwood in the tank and does not have an effect on the ph because of the crushed coral substrate. I really don't need nothing fancy, even though one would be nice. Also I want something that would be common in the trade. Something colorful or fancy would be nice since the fish that I keep are colorful but like I said before it's just to take care of the algae.

[racoll]

While I agree with Larry that a few pieces of matured bogwood is very unlikely to have a large pH effect on well buffered aquarium water, it will certainly add significant organics to the water and cause that brown stain. I don't think this is ideal conditions for Rift Lake cichlids.

as a result of this diet, Panaque's do not like a high pH!
they like to eat wood, wood causes the water to be acidic and hence the Panaque has evolved to be a fish of the soft and acidic water biotope.

Not convinced by this Sid. A great many

Panaque

caught for the aquarium trade are from Andean sediment-laden whitewater drainages (e.g.

Panaque maccus

,

Panaque albomaculatus

,

Panaque nigrolineatus

,

Panaque sp(l204)

,

Panaque sp(l206)

etc, etc).

Water is well buffered is these rivers and often neutral to alkaline with a conductivity of ~200us. A pH of 8.4 was recorded in the habitat of

Panaque sp(l204)

, but this may have been an extreme summer value.

These

Panaque

certainly don't need soft acidic water, but I agree it doesn't mean to say they should be kept in Rift Lake tanks.

[Richard B]

Aside from any further debate - the common bristlenose, either brown or albino fits the bill in being an algae eater of note & able to stand up to mbuna as long as there are sufficient hidey-holes

[LeeRoy]

I would like to add a word of caution, mbuna's are some of the more aggressive African cichlids. If I was going to try and keep Bristlenose with them, I would try to pick some of the larger females. The tentacles of the males might not last long.

This is just my 2c.

LeeRoy

[Richard B]

I would like to add a word of caution, mbuna's are some of the more aggressive African cichlids. If I was going to try and keep Bristlenose with them, I would try to pick some of the larger females. The tentacles of the males might not last long.
This is just my 2c.
LeeRoy

as long as there are sufficient hidey-holes

[ceh]

I have one with mbunas and no problem but pleco is 30 cm large

[Syno Rey]

Sorry to post on an old thread. I had put a larger female common bristlenose and it was doing good but just pased away suddently for unknown reasons. Sinc them I have changed my tank setup and I no longer keep the African cichlids. I do think that someday I will setup another mbuna tank and will want a plec since they are my favs.

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Lignan is such a weak acid that to make aquarium water more acidic would hardly be noticeable unless the water is pure as in RO water. Most tap water has sufficient buffering capacity that the wood will not have much effect on the pH.

I agree with Larry (Apistomaster) about the effect of most wood, on pH, in heavily carbonate buffered water. There is some more discussion of the reasons for this in the

Lophiobagrus breeding post <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... phiobagrus>

I also think some-one should clarify the statement.

"L204" was found at pH8.5, therefore it is suitable for Rift valley cichlid tanks

I don't think that pH (on its own) really tells us very much. The rivers flowing through the foothills of the Andes (where L204 comes from) can have a high pH, and are relatively high conductivity. There are some water parameters in "Catfish Atlas: v. 1, Hans-Georg Evers & Ingo Seidel" But this water is still light years away from the hardness and alkalinity of lake Malawi (and an even more stellar distance away from that of L. Tanganyika).

The problem is with what pH actually means. pH is only one measure of the water, and it measures a slightly strange parameter, that is the ratio of alkaline (hydrogen ion acceptors) and acid ions (hydrogen ion donors).

This is the important bit, pH only tells us the ratio, not the amount of ions or the degree of buffering.

This means you can have soft water with very little buffering and a high pH (this is what you get when the water companies add NaOH to soft tap water, often temporarily giving you pH8) and you can have extremely hard water that is both infinitely buffered and mineral rich, and they are very different if you are a fish.

cheers Darrel