PlanetCatfish.com

Are there any species of plecos that don't get so big? I'm thinking maybe around 8-10"...

The common pleco (L23) gets about 10" max...

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/lo ... p/88_f.php

or the Pterygoplichthys joselimaianus, but I don't think those are very common in your LFS

Commons grow much larger than 10".

Many ancistrines remain under 10".

Some bristlenose plecs get up to 5" to 8" long plus a common plec can get up to 3 foot.

eclipsecatfish wrote:Some bristlenose plecs get up to 5" to 8" long plus a common plec can get up to 3 foot.

A 3 foot common pleco? Surely not. It may be a Acanthicus Adonis or something, but not a common one... Some of the bigger "Common" ones grow to maybe a foot and half an perhaps a little over that, but quite certainly not three foot.

As for answer to the original question: There's plenty of them that don't grow overly big. If you want one that grows FAIRLY big, but not excessively, you'd better looking at:
, or some of the bigger Ancistrus genus.

The Baryncistrus genus contains some that don't grow too large, but still gets reasonably big. As far as I know, most of them grow pretty slowly too.

There's plenty of others, depends on what you want from it...

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Mats

There have been several species of pleco sold under the name "common". I think one needs to define which species of "common" one is referring to.

zenyfish wrote:There have been several species of pl*co sold under the name "common". I think one needs to define which species of "common" one is referring to.

Sure, there's at least three, not counting shops and wholesalers that are sloppy with defining what they have. However, NOT one of the species will grow to three feet. There's one or two plecos that will, but none of those can even remotely be confused with a "Common" pleco.

, and are "big growers", as in 600mm+ (24"+).

There's probably a few others that grow really big. But none of them can be confused with a "Common" pleco.

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Mats

Just wondering ... which species would be the smallest "common" pleco? Or do they all get to be much larger than 10 inches?

None of the species known as a "common pleco" reach less than 10".