PlanetCatfish.com

Well, hate is a strong word. But I do despise the many many phone calls the zoo gets from people wanting to donate their fish, which, according to callers, are always great for zoo setups. Like a brevy of yellow labs crossed with red zebras, deformed Oscars, redtail cats that are stunted, convicts...and common plecos. o_O

We do have two adult common plecos at work; one is in a Lake Tang setup, and on Tuesday I'm going to yank this foot long monster out. The only tank I can put him into is a lima shovelnose setup; 200 gallon tank with the lima, 7 full grown silver dollars, and a common pleco. The tank has two Magum 350s and a good deal of aeration, and weekly water changes.

Overstocked/underfiltered tank with two commons?

I do want these guys to be somewhat happy with their lives, insofar as plecos can be. Hence I want to make some kind of setup where they can hide from each other and light, but since this is a zoo, they still have to be seen by the public. I was thinking of getting some large black PVC pipe, glueing on some river rock (via aquarium adhesive) and having semi-natural caves for them to hide in. Any other suggestions?

Knowone else has wrote you so I will Your idea sounds good but you could also try low light levels and maybe setting up caves that are along the glass. You could put tape or a flap on the glass and lift it to see the fish. You could also try putting veggies out where they have to expose themselves to eat it.

commojns usually arnet that shy

it shouldn`t be to much of a problem

I dunno if you would be working in a zoo I was director of

Wondering why you need to move the one from the Tanganyika tank?

Because the male frontosa is starving the pleco, and tends to attack him whenever the pleco dares to come out to find food. I'd just rather have the pleco in a different tank.