BN Plecos in discus tank?

[jetajockey]

Any opinions on keeping BN's in a discus tank? I have a well planted 125 discus tank that stays around 84, is this temp too much for them? I've always kept my bn's at room temp, so I'm just curious if I should pick another species or not.

Ideally I'd like to put my breeders in there, although I've heard that they prefer colder water to breed in, just looking for opinions, thanks!

[ceh]

i have them in my discus tank no proplem they breed normal if i think good they breed bether than in colder water, my temp is 30°c

[MatsP]

To some extent it would depend on which species of Ancistrus it is. The common variety will certainly survive both the temperature and pH, but the conditions are probably more suitable for a blackwater species, such as

Ancistrus dolichopterus

.

--
Mats

[jetajockey]

These are just your regular old brown/albino bristlenose plecos. I don't want to put them in there and have them be miserable lol.

[apistomaster]

The common Bushy Nose is the best algae eating pleco to keep with Discus and yes, they breed like the Guppyostomus when they are kept at 84*F.
I do not routinely keep my Discus at 86*F/30*C but during the summer they certainly are that warm even on a cool day. That is within Discus tolerance to be sure but they are not normally found living in water that warm as a whole. My complaints about the common Bushy Nose is that they grow to be rather large and can do a lot of digging which can wreak havoc in a planted tank. Especially in a newer set up. Larger specimens can be hard on the broad leaves Echinodorus Sword plants.They don't always stop at the leaves' surfaces and can dig into them too much.
It is hard to remove them from any tank let alone a heavily planted one if you need to do that when they grow too large.
I have 5 big BN in with my Nhamunda Blue Discus. I have to remove the wood furnishings before I can catch them. Even so, the whole project will result in 10 banged and scraped Blue Discus because they will panic when I start chasing the BN into a large net by a smaller one.

I finally allowed myself the luxury of setting up my 125 gal as a planted tanks stocked with various Characins and for my catfish all I stocked were 25 common Otocinclus and 6 Farlowella sp. These are easier on the plants but are very effective algae eaters. Normally my urge is to stock my large tanks with wild Discus. I haven't tried Farlowella in a planted Discus tank but I believe they would do well enough. I am running this tank closer to 78-80 *F which is too cool for Discus.

[jetajockey]

Thanks for the reply. That settles it for me, I'll add em and see what happens. While I'm at it, I'll add my otos since this setup is still in diatom mode -_-