What beautiful plecos grow to a foot or so?

[THQ]

Hi all, I am looking for a pleco for my oscar/SA cichlid tank that is big enough to be on the food radar and can take care of itself. This means 1 foot long or so. Apart from the common/sailfin variety, what are some nice looking plecos that fit the bill and aren't super rare? I know all the most stunning ones are usually < 6" unfortunately.
The only ones I know of are L001 gold spot pleco, but they look too much like commons. I can't get L014 sunshine plecos in my country. Thanks.

[pleconut]

There's probably quite a few that hit around this size mark. But moreso what needs consideration is regarding the Oscar and SA cichlids, these cichlids would need to reach a good size to be compatible with the oscar and the oscars are really messy feeders. Most importantly is having a filtration system that can handle the bioload once the pleco and other fish reach adult size. If you looked at the CateLog for most of the larger species of plecos there are notes that make this point on keeping plecos with oscars.

[THQ]

Hi, yes thanks for your concern. I have planned and set up the tank with the messiness of oscars and plecos in mind (I plan to only have 1 of each with a few smaller cichlids). It's a 6x2x2 180G with dual Unimax 700s for biological (with combined 16L of seachem matrix), dual AC 110s (with sponges and 2 L of purigen) for mechanical/chemical, deep sand bed and nitrate reactor under construction for denitrification. Daily gravel vacs with Eheim battery vac. 80% weekly PWCs. I should be fine for filtration. Just wanted some L numbers to look into. Cheers.

[pleconut]

Some of the "cactus" plecos in the genera Psueudacanthicus, hit around the 1ft mark and are quite tough as plecos go in general, though as smaller plecos are more my area of experience and knowledge, hopefully someone else will chime in with some advice on these specifically. Ones in this group I can think of off the top of my head are Psueudacanthicus: Spinosis L160 Leopardus, of which there's two variations L114 and L600 , Pitanga, L124 Hysrix L155, i think these get a bit bigger than 1ft though. There's quite a few others also both inside and outside of this genera. If you go to the top left hand corner of the homepage theres a tab saying CateLog theres a search option available where you can enter the size of the fish you are looking for eg 11-13 inches the family Loricariidae then the params and other information, hit search and you should get results of fish that will possibly be suitable in terms of size, once you find one of interest come back to us on the forum, hopefully someone who has experience with the specific fish can advise you further.

[Mol_PMB]

I've got an L024 Pseudacanthicus pitanga which is a beautiful and active fish that gives as good as she gets.
However, she digs and is quite good at it. This could be a problem with a deep sand bed substrate which requires to be undisturbed. Do you need a big pleco that doesn't dig? That could be more of a challenge. Maybe a Panaque that tends to live on wood rather than the substrate?

[THQ]

Awesome, thanks for the help guys. Next step is trying to find them for sale in my country.