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Hello, I wonder if someone knows how to improve growth of the L200 Green Phantom.

I have had 3 of them for about 1.5 years now and they
haven't even grown 0.5 inch during this time. They where
about 4 inches when I got them.

I feed them with shrimp mix (shrimp and pees 50% each),
algae discs and shrimp sticks (OSI). I feed once a day and they live in a 230 litre tank
together with 10 other plecs
(Peckoltias and Hypancistrus) in the same size.
The L200 plecs seem OK but aren't as stabby as the other
plecs.

I have tried to feed them zucchini (courguette) and black mosquito larvae,
but they showed no interest what so ever.

Does anyone know what food to provide them with to improve their growth?

A few things come to mind immediately:

- Most plecos are "continual grazers", i.e. they need to eat for a large proportion of the day. If the food is finished too soon, the ones which are slowest to get to the food ,may not get enough food. Not sure if your L200's are getting there quickly or not... If you have lots of similar fish in the tank, that's going to make the problem more obvious. Feeding once a day doesn't help here.

- Do none of your fish take an interest in your vegetables? Do you leave the veg in there for a day (24hr) and have you tried some other vegetable? Melon is really good too (not veg as such, but usually popular). Honey-dew melon (honungsmelon) is nice, so is Canteloupe (sp?) (nätmelon). My bristlenoses practically fall over each other to get to on to melon... Regular cucumber is also a choice that may work. Sugar snap peas (sockerärtor) works well too, the whole pod, not just the pea-pod itself.

With anything other than Melon and Cucumber, I'd boil it for just a few seconds (bring water to the boil, shove the veg in, let it get back to boiling, then take off the heat and drain the hot water. Rinse with cool water and "serve").

It's worth trying the same thing a few days in a row too, because the fish may not realize that it's food until it's been in the tank for a bit and they "get used to it".

Finally: Water quality will affect the fish's eating and growth rate. If you have high nitrate levels ( > 25 ppm is high in this case) in the water, that may well affect the fish.

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Mats