Hello: A Tale of Two Plecos

[Creepella]

Hi all,
This is my intro, the story of how I came here to this board. I live in Toronto.
I've had fish tanks for almost 50 years. I was given my first 5 gal tank when I was about 6 years old. I've always had at least one tank since then.

Now I have four tanks running. One is a 40 gal marine tank with one big fat green spotted puffer. I also have a 15 gal Fluval Flex tank with four dwarf puffers, and a little 3 gallon tank with a betta. Finally there's the 40 gal freshwater community tank with an assortment of fish.

Months ago my community tank became inundated with black algae. Snails didn't make a dent in it, neither did phosphate removal pads in the filters (I had 2 40 gal HOBs on that tank back then, now I have canisters on both of my 40 gal tanks). I was never a fan of any kind of "sucker" fish because when I was a child the ones we had (otos and common plecos) always ended up eating holes in the other fish. I got a Siamese algae eater and it did a great job, at first. Then once it got to a certain size it started ripping the fins off of the other fish despite being fed with algae wafers, shrimp pellets and veggies and I had to get rid of it. I decided to research plecos because now there are many more species available than there were when I was a kid.

That's how I found this site. I spent a long time looking for pleco species that would clean up the algae but stay small and get along with my other fish. I decided to get an Ancistrus. I went to my LFS and they had small 1" albinos on sale. I bought one, but sadly it only lasted just over a week. I read that they can be delicate as fry so I went back and bought a bigger one, 2.5 inches. With this one I did a slow drip intro to my tank's water before adding it to my tank. I enjoyed watching it when it came out at night. Then after a couple of weeks, it disappeared. I moved some of the decor around but it was nowhere to be found. Sadly I concluded it must have died too. And yes I did check my water parameters many times, the tank is well cycled with 0 ammonia, mid range pH etc.

I decided to try a different species, so I created a list of candidates and went to another shop which specialized in plecos, along with a few other fish species (cichlids, arowanas etc.) I found a tank with several pleco species, the L200 caught my eye. At that time I didn't realize that there were two species called L200. But - there was one which was more active and had a higher fin than the others which I picked out. It's about 5 inches long. It wasn't until I got home that I looked it up on this site again and found that I had chosen the less common "Bary" species.

He (not sure of the gender, could be a she) is quite active, comes out of hiding in the early evening and moves from place to place nibbling different surfaces. Then yesterday I set up the canister for the community tank for the first time. It made an incredible difference to the fish, who all became a lot more active. Most of the species I have appreciate water current. Then this morning I got up and checked the tank and found my "dead" Ancistrus perched on top of a dragon ornament. I think he must have been hiding deep inside the hollow ornament. So it's nice to have a "bonus pleco". It's too young to have facial bristles yet so I don't know the sex.

By the way, I forgot to mention I'm also a fan of Corydoras catfish. I've kept several kinds over the years. Right now I have two "odd" albino Corys in my community tank. They're obviously different species because one is a lot smaller than the other. They're several years old, used to be part of a shoal. I plan to get more once a few of my older fish pass away.

[bekateen]

Hi Creepella,

Welcome to PlanetCatfish! And thanks for sharing your journey.

Your story of the missing BN is a common one. If you had a pair in the tank, your story probably would have ended differently with "I thought they both were dead, but then I found 100 babies in the tank.

To lose a BN and buy a Baryancistrus as a replacement, you certainly did level-jump a bit with that, coming from just an Ancistrus background (and in your mind it was an unsuccessful background until now). Good luck with your L200.

Cheers, Eric