The Greatest Pleco Escape!
Posted: 04 Jun 2006, 21:45
Just over a month ago I placed several plecos in a 15 gallon on my top rack shelf to have them ready to take to a friend in Maryland. Early in the morning, I started packing up the fish and was surprised that I was missing a large L 238. I got on my hands and knees and checked the floor and figured the fish must have somehow escaped even though the tank had a cover. I was gone for a week and when I came back I looked again but could not find the fish. I figured the maid must have found the body and threw it out.
Today I was breaking down a rocky Mexican fish biotope with a medium-sezed cichlid as the sole remaining resident. I fed this tank lightly as it only had one fish. It was also unheated and filled with Mexican tap water (very high pH and hard). As I started taking out the stones, I found the L 238! Happy and looking to be in very good health.
There are several things that make this amazing. 1) The tank it escaped had a lid, 2) The tank it ended up in was not directly below the tank it escaped from, but two feet over... and it had a lid as well! 3) The fish moved from a tropical (80F) tank with RO water to an unheated tank (74F) with hard, high pH water with nothing in between and lived. Not to mention I have no idea what it was eating for the last month.
I really would not have believed this if I had not seen it.
The 15 gallon, with a blue background, is now on the left hand side where the 10 gallon with the spawning pot is in this photo. The fish ended up in the 20 gallon on the middle shelf at right with the coconut shell. Both tanks had glass covers with no more than 1 inch open along the back for the filter.
-Shane
Today I was breaking down a rocky Mexican fish biotope with a medium-sezed cichlid as the sole remaining resident. I fed this tank lightly as it only had one fish. It was also unheated and filled with Mexican tap water (very high pH and hard). As I started taking out the stones, I found the L 238! Happy and looking to be in very good health.
There are several things that make this amazing. 1) The tank it escaped had a lid, 2) The tank it ended up in was not directly below the tank it escaped from, but two feet over... and it had a lid as well! 3) The fish moved from a tropical (80F) tank with RO water to an unheated tank (74F) with hard, high pH water with nothing in between and lived. Not to mention I have no idea what it was eating for the last month.
I really would not have believed this if I had not seen it.
The 15 gallon, with a blue background, is now on the left hand side where the 10 gallon with the spawning pot is in this photo. The fish ended up in the 20 gallon on the middle shelf at right with the coconut shell. Both tanks had glass covers with no more than 1 inch open along the back for the filter.
-Shane
He hasn't made it back into the filter yet, but I see him trying on a daily basis. He also comes out of the water to feed on whatever is on the glass(like the duckweed in the photos).