Royal Plec Sawdust

greenmonkey51 · Post by **greenmonkey51** » 30 Dec 2005, 04:32

How does everybody deal with the saw dust from there royal eating on driftwood.

racoll · Post by **racoll** » 30 Dec 2005, 12:44

My small Panaquolus produce more than enough. I dread to think what a big P.nigrolineatus can produce!

Several very large external filters are needed, along with regular cleaning!

pureplecs · Post by **pureplecs** » 31 Dec 2005, 14:38

In our 90g we have an 11" Royal Watermelon. We ended up having to add 1400 gph of filtration to even try to keep up with the little tyke.

Post by **Shane** » 31 Dec 2005, 16:08

How does everybody deal with the saw dust from there royal eating on driftwood.

Large, frequent water changes. I have not found a filtration unit yet that can keep up with the sawdust production of a healthy Panaque.

-Shane

FuglyDragon · Post by **FuglyDragon** » 02 Jan 2006, 18:46

As a side note, I recently read an artcle (Sorry I dont remember the URL) where the fish keeper allowed the sawdust to build up naturally in a large tank, it settled in the dead spots as would be expected and reached upto 30cm deep in some places. According to the article and the accompaning photos his 2 royal plecs 'dug' a cave type structure in the sawdust pile and spawned in it.

Having given my 2 L191 royals there own 'drift wood snag' tank with sandy bottom I must admit I am amazed how much sawdust they create, and Im also amazed how much they move the sand around, the bottom of the tank is constantly changeing.

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 03 Jan 2006, 12:40

Aside from it looking unsightly, is there any reason not to just leave it around?

I just added more filtration to my tank because it tends to build up a lot of "stuff floating about" in the tank, but I wouldn't think that the sawdust from large Panaque would actually cause a problem as such.

If it settles in heaps, you can easily remove the heap with a gravel-cleaner or similar.

--
Mats