Q. How long for my pleco's to reach full size?

[Carter77]

Hi,
I've ten different pleco's all in between 2" and 3". I've had them for around 6 months and haven't seen any real growth which is great as I like them small.
But how long will they stay this way.
Do they take many years to reach full size?
Will some grow quicker than others?
Many thanks
>}}}•>

[racoll]

We'll need to know which species of pleco you are talking about.

If you aren't sure, post a picture in this thread, or in the "What is my catfish forum".

If this post appears to disappear, it's because it's been moved to the loricariid (pleco) forum.

[Mod edit: Now moved... -Mats]

[Carter77]

1. L200 green phantom 3"
2. L081 Golden nugget 3"
3. Lda31 Mustard spot 2"
4. L128 Blue phantom 1"
5. L027b Royal 4"
6. L264 Sultan 3"
7. L091 Three beacon 3"
8. L082 Opel spot 2"
9. L240 vampire 3"
And newly
10. L114 Leopard cactus 2"
Dude why's my forum moved?

[Carter77]

Hi,
I've ten different pleco's all in between 2" and 3". I've had them for around 6 months and haven't seen any real growth which is great as I like them small.
But how long will they stay this way.
Do they take many years to reach full size?
Will some grow quicker than others?
Many thanks
1. L200 green phantom 3"
2. L081 Golden nugget 3"
3. Lda31 Mustard spot 2"
4. L128 Blue phantom 1"
5. L027b Royal 4"
6. L264 Sultan 3"
7. L091 Three beacon 3"
8. L082 Opel spot 2"
9. L240 vampire 3"
And newly
10. L114 Leopard cactus 2"

[Dave Rinaldo]

This is a double post.
Your original post was moved to the appropriate forum.
I'll guess this post will be removed by the moderators.

[Carter77]

?

[Jools]

From your other very similar post:

To assist you with aquarium problems people are going to need a little more information.

Temperature, Tank Size, Filters, your Maintenance routine, results from any test you may have taken, how long has the tank been running?

What type of Tetras have you had problems with?

Pictures can help to along with that information.

Give a little and you'll get a whole lot back...

Jools

[Carter77]

Ok
1. Temp 26
2. 190L
3. 6 month
4. 25% once a week.
5. All water results fine.

Just a rough idea guys, will be fine
Many thanks

[Dave Rinaldo]

?

I was referring to this post

[MatsP]

So, to determine the growth rate of any given fish, it's essential to understand what food it gets, how much food it gets, and what the exact water conditions are. The last, you have only provided as "good" which doesn't tell us if the nitrate levels are 1ppm, 10ppm or "less than 100 ppm", just as an example.

However, I think it's fair to say that plecos grow at different rate given the same other conditions, so if we group them as "Slow", "Meidum" and "Fast" growers you get this:

Slow growth rate:
2. L081 Golden nugget 3"
3. Lda31 Mustard spot 2"
5. L027b Royal 4"

Medium growth rate:
1. L200 green phantom 3"
10. L114 Leopard cactus 2"

Fast growing:
6. L264 Sultan 3"
7. L091 Three beacon 3"
9. L240 vampire 3"

Not quite sure:
8. L082 Opel spot 2"

Of course, this assumes they do get the REQUIRED amount of food, and the correct type of food. With so many plecos, with such a varied diet (some should be mainly gettting wood as nutrition, others are primarily carnivorous), it is probably difficult to get the optimal amount and type of food to all of your fishes, all the time. This makes it harder to predict exactly what will happen...

Also, generally, plecos grow more in the first year or two than they do in the next months/years. From memory of the talk yesterday on breeding Pseudacanthicus, they got to about 4" within a year. But I don't expect everyones fish to grow that quickly.

Sorry to not provide you with "this will be fully grown in X time", but it's almost impossible to say for sure, as there are SO many factors, many of which aren't possible to measure very precisely with home aquaria test kits (nitrate level, oxygen level, etc).

Now, I really need to get some breakfast, pack up my new fishies and get ready to fly home from the L-number days...

--
Mats

[Shane]

This is actually a good question and I like how Mats has divided them for you by rate of growth.

Rate of growth in loricariids will be determined to some extent by the loricariid's diet preference. It is a lot easier to "power feed" a carnivore on high quality live foods than a wood eater. A vegetarian pleco is somewhere in the middle. Those with a mixed diet will require a balanced diet. They may seem to grow very fast on a meat heavy diet, but this will eventually lead to long term health problems. Above said, food and feeding is not one of the largest factors.

There has been a lot written about this topic by scientists studying aquaculture practices and many of their basic findings are useful to aquarists growing out fry or juvenile fishes. Most of these articles are on Tilapia and salmonids, but a fair number cover catfishes such as Pangasius and Clarias. I even have a handful on the aquaculture of loricariids for food that include Hypostomus and Loricariinae.

So, to determine the growth rate of any given fish, it's essential to understand what food it gets, how much food it gets, and what the exact water conditions are.

One would think so, but feed (amount and type) ranks much lower as a growth factor ("growth performance" factor in aquaculture language) than others. One study I found stated that even offering "umlimited" food (something almost impossible to do in an aquarium) had a small impact on growth. Water quality and crowding have a larger impact than food. Crowding and water quality are separate parameters for aquaculture even though they are very much related when it comes to aquariums. Crowding refers to the impact on growth even when water conditions are ideal (such as in pens used to raise fish in the ocean). Crowded fish, even in ideal water conditions, will grow much slower. Stress also has a large impact on growth as do things like temperature, photoperiod, and dissolved O2 levels.

So I can't tell you how fast your fish will reach maturity, but they will reach it fastest if you:
1) Provide the best water quality you can (large, frequent water changes).
2) Avoid crowding. The more space each fish has the faster they will grow.
3) Feed high quality foods frequently (without decreasing the water's quality... hard to do in a glass box).
4) Avoid stressing the fish, or combing fish that stress each other.
5) Maintain the fish at an appropriate, stable temperature.
6) As loricariids mainly eat after "lights out" keep the aquarium lights off. 2-3 hours a day of lights on, to allow you to see them and make sure they are healthy, is enough.
7) Keep O2 levels high by providing strong surface agitation and removing dissolved solids frequently (i.e. water changes).

-Shane

[MatsP]

Sorry, if it wasn't clear, yes, I agree that the water quality is the most important factor in improving/reducing growth [1]. But for optimal growth, the water needs to be clean, the food needs to be ENOUGH for the fish, and oxygen levels need to be right.

The point about feeding time/not too much light is also a good suggestion - I hadn't thought of that, but it certainly makes sense.

And in my own experience, different conditions can make a big difference in how quick a fish grows. I was moving some corys to a new, big tank, and accidentally caught a young Sturisoma that was in the same tank - in fact, I caught three Sturisoma with the dozen or so corys. Since I had plenty of Sturisoma, I thought I may just as well put it in the bigger tank... After a few weeks, it was very obvious that the fish in the big tank was growing much faster. After a few months, the ones in the big tank were nearly fully grown at around 7-8"/18-20cm, but the ones in the smaller tank were at least couple of inches/5cm smaller. Now, I'm not 100% sure what the difference was between the tanks - probably all of water quality, space and food availability.

[1] Poor water quality is almost certainly the source of the misconception that "fish grow to the size of the tank" - the fact is that they grow to the pollution level in the tank - if you hook up an 18"/10g tank to a constant (high) flow of good, clean, suitable water and put a red-tail catfish in the tank, it will probably rather LITERALLY bust the tank - or at least grow until it no longer fits physically in the tank and this causes health problems with the fish - but most people don't run hundreds of liters of water through their 18"/10g tank, so the fish stops growing and likely dies from the water quality issues of "big fish in small tank". Some fish, such as goldfish can tolerate extremely poor water quality, so they are the typical "stops growing when the tank gets small" mythical fish.

--
Mats

[Shane]

The point about feeding time/not too much light is also a good suggestion - I hadn't thought of that, but it certainly makes sense.

I should have mentioned that it is the opposite case for diurnal fishes. Hatcheries raising fishes that eat during the day will greatly extend the daylight photoperiod to keep the fry eating more hours per day. This works especially well with "unlimited" fry food sources such as green water or large amounts of live foods like vinegar eels.

Mats, I would bet that your example above about Sturisoma had more to do with crowding. The Sturisoma in the large tank had more room to grow. Although I admit it is almost impossible to separate crowding from water quality in an aquarium the way aquaculturists are able to by using fish pens in lakes and oceans.

I think it would be really interesting to see aquarists conduct controlled experiments with fry spread between different rearing tanks to demonstrate how different variables impact growth.

-Shane

[Rabbit]

Ok
1. Temp 26
2. 190L
3. 6 month
4. 25% once a week.
5. All water results fine.

Just a rough idea guys, will be fine
Many thanks

25% water change is not enough (with the assumption you have no plants) i do 40% on my 250ltr with 4 large (14-20cm) plecs in it.
190L tank? is in my opinion already too small for what you have equating to a small 4' or large 3', and would strongly recommend upgrading.

[Linus_Cello]

I would just add that your plecos may go through a growth spurt. My 2 L-114s, they grew slowly until they reached 2.5"-3" SL (for the smaller one, this took 1.5 years), and then grew to almost 4-5" SL in about 8-9 months.

[redfan]

Ok
1. Temp 26
2. 190L
3. 6 month
4. 25% once a week.
5. All water results fine.

Just a rough idea guys, will be fine
Many thanks

25% water change is not enough (with the assumption you have no plants) i do 40% on my 250ltr with 4 large (14-20cm) plecs in it.
190L tank? is in my opinion already too small for what you have equating to a small 4' or large 3', and would strongly recommend upgrading.

I have to seriously agree with Rabbit here! My biggest tank is a 240ltr which has 3 Jaguar catfish and 1 LDA 33 in it, I generally clean 10% daily. If I did not have the time to do this I would be doing 20% twice a week.

The most plec wise I have ever housed in that tank is 3 plecs (gibbi, magnum and g. phantom) they produced a serious amount of waste! Having I think you said 10 in a 190ltr tank (50G U.S. without allowing for substrate etc) is going to create some serious issues and possibly the reason they are not growing much. As pointed out here by others, lots of different feeding requirements here is going to cause enough of an issue as it is.

Sorry, but I think you need to think about either another largish tank or re homing quite a few of them.

[Carter77]

Thanks guys, all your help has been great. My aim was to see roughly how long I can enjoy my pleco's in my tank before they out grow my tank and need to re-home them.
Thanks

[pleco171182]

This is actually a good question and I like how Mats has divided them for you by rate of growth.

Rate of growth in loricariids will be determined to some extent by the loricariid's diet preference. It is a lot easier to "power feed" a carnivore on high quality live foods than a wood eater. A vegetarian pleco is somewhere in the middle. Those with a mixed diet will require a balanced diet. They may seem to grow very fast on a meat heavy diet, but this will eventually lead to long term health problems. Above said, food and feeding is not one of the largest factors.

There has been a lot written about this topic by scientists studying aquaculture practices and many of their basic findings are useful to aquarists growing out fry or juvenile fishes. Most of these articles are on Tilapia and salmonids, but a fair number cover catfishes such as Pangasius and Clarias. I even have a handful on the aquaculture of loricariids for food that include Hypostomus and Loricariinae.

So, to determine the growth rate of any given fish, it's essential to understand what food it gets, how much food it gets, and what the exact water conditions are.

One would think so, but feed (amount and type) ranks much lower as a growth factor ("growth performance" factor in aquaculture language) than others. One study I found stated that even offering "umlimited" food (something almost impossible to do in an aquarium) had a small impact on growth. Water quality and crowding have a larger impact than food. Crowding and water quality are separate parameters for aquaculture even though they are very much related when it comes to aquariums. Crowding refers to the impact on growth even when water conditions are ideal (such as in pens used to raise fish in the ocean). Crowded fish, even in ideal water conditions, will grow much slower. Stress also has a large impact on growth as do things like temperature, photoperiod, and dissolved O2 levels.

So I can't tell you how fast your fish will reach maturity, but they will reach it fastest if you:
1) Provide the best water quality you can (large, frequent water changes).
2) Avoid crowding. The more space each fish has the faster they will grow.
3) Feed high quality foods frequently (without decreasing the water's quality... hard to do in a glass box).
4) Avoid stressing the fish, or combing fish that stress each other.
5) Maintain the fish at an appropriate, stable temperature.
6) As loricariids mainly eat after "lights out" keep the aquarium lights off. 2-3 hours a day of lights on, to allow you to see them and make sure they are healthy, is enough.
7) Keep O2 levels high by providing strong surface agitation and removing dissolved solids frequently (i.e. water changes).

-Shane

Hi,

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but i found it a most interesting read!

Would it be possible to share the "aquaculture of loricariids"?

I have a little project where I'm trying to grow a group of small plecos at their optimum rate. The four factors i'm concentrating on are:

-Water quality, 25% change every two days
-Dissolved oxygen and water flow rate
-Balanced mixed diet
-Minimal stress

I am a keen fisherman and have studied the growth rate of carp at Yateley and of triploid rainbow trout at Dever springs so im trying to implement some of these practices into loricariids growing.

If anyone has anything to add from their own experiences then please share?

Many thanks

[pleconut]

Hi you have a mixture of wood eaters , carnivorous and omnivorous plecos in the tank and some significant variation in the adult size of your plecos. The filtration requirements for each type would differ ie particulary in my knowledge the wood eaters would need mechanical pre filtering to remove the 'sawdust' i would say for better growth results and overall health to try to separate the three groups.

[bekateen]

One factor which I would add to Shane's list and which I always consider in grow-out tanks for my juveniles (most recently, corys, Ancistrus, Bunocephalus, and Apistogramma; and in my ancient past, Convicts, Geophagus, and Mbuna) is matched-body size of tank inhabitants of the same species. This may not be as much of a factor when all the tank residents are of different species, but if you're talking aquaculture practices, then you probably will have tanks filled with juveniles of the same species, and here is where I see the effect.

In my experience, when a group of young fish grow in the same tank, one or a few will accelerate ahead of the others in regards to body size. These large fish obviously will eat more food, and probably forage more competitively (or at least more often) than their smaller tank mates, and that alone may slow the growth of smaller fish due to lack of food or stress from competitive interactions. But in addition to this effect, past research has postulated and shown some evidence for the existence of "growth-stunting" chemical pheromones in fish (and aquatic larval amphibians) which are produced by larger fish in order to slow the growth of smaller fish, thus helping themselves to get more food and grow faster. The amount of pheromone released is supposedly proportional to the size of the fish, so this creates a positive feedback effect on fish growth - the larger fish grow faster as they get bigger, and the smaller fish grow slower as they get "left behind" in body size and ability to inhibit growth of their larger tank mates. There would be an obvious evolutionary advantage for the larger individuals if these pheromones really exist.

So in my tanks, if I have a bunch of juveniles together of the same age and size, after a short time (weeks) a few large fish will be obvious. I remove them and place them in a separate tank. Back in the original tank with smaller juveniles, a few more will start to grow fast, and after a few weeks I will remove those too and place them in with bigger fish. Every few weeks I'll do this, removing the largest fish and placing them into another tank with other larger fish, thus allowing my smallest fish to catch up without potentially being inhibited in their growth.

In my experience and opinion, the effect is real, although I'm not fully convinced that this effect is due to a pheromone produced by the fish, versus just a side effect of, for example, the fact that larger fish produce more wastes and one or more of these waste metabolites has the effect described above.

No doubt, this effect is similar to and is definitely related to the overcrowding issue mentioned by Shane, but this effect is different in that the effect is neutralized by only minor changes in tank stocking - if you originally have 50 fish in one tank, to really influence stocking you would need to decrease the number of fish significantly. But if it's a chemical which actively suppresses growth of smaller siblings, then removing just one or two big fish can have a profound effect on the growth of the smaller fish.

Shane also mentioned the stress of overcrowding. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the growth stunting effect I described here, if it's really mediated by some pheromonal substance, works by increasing stress levels in the smaller siblings.

Cheers, Eric

P.S.,

Would it be possible to share the "aquaculture of loricariids"?

To find articles about raising plecos, you can use Google scholar (scholar.google.com) and search using terms like aquaculture with pleco or loricariidae.

[pleconut]

I will look that one up myself also in my group I have 5 larger ones and 3 smaller ones of my L397s but only one is from a younger batch but only slightly smaller than the smallest of older batch the bigger ones are obviously getting 1st pickings of the food (and caves) i was thinking of separating my reasoning behind it was to give smaller ones a better chance to catch up and get larger ones to maturity.

[bekateen]

Here is an older sample paper. It describes inhibiting factors and "crowding" factors: http://www.aquahobby.com/etc/pdf/Chemic ... 20Fish.pdf

Here is a recent paper looking for the build-up effects (not specifically pheromones) in recirculated water on growth of some fish, including

Clarias gariepinus

: The effect of nearly closed RAS on the feed intake and growth of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) and European eel (Anguilla). Perhaps significant in this latter paper is the fact that the authors found no growth-inhibiting effects in Clarias.

[pleco171182]

Here is an older sample paper. It describes inhibiting factors and "crowding" factors: http://www.aquahobby.com/etc/pdf/Chemic ... 20Fish.pdf

Here is a recent paper looking for the build-up effects (not specifically pheromones) in recirculated water on growth of some fish, including

Clarias gariepinus

: The effect of nearly closed RAS on the feed intake and growth of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) and European eel (Anguilla). Perhaps significant in this latter paper is the fact that the authors found no growth-inhibiting effects in Clarias.

Thats great, thanks bekateen!

I also found this and it was a good read http://www.unuftp.is/static/fellows/doc ... a07prf.pdf with nearly all fish i found dissolved oxygen a large factor in growth.

Teresa, the chap you were referencing in your first post yesterday posted this thread nearly 5 years ago, i'm sure his plecs are fully grown by now and moved to more suitable housing.

Kind regards

pleco171182

[pleconut]

thanks for pointing that out i really need to check topic dates correspond with the actual date from now on!