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Hello catfish keepers



Has anyone had any experiance with Panaque sp. cf. nigrolineatus`xingu and plants, i have a 5ft tank that has lots of wood 9 anubias and clumps java fern in. i know i have read that panaques are plant molesters, but is there a limit to this in regards to certain plants. Thanks for any help

ben

My panaque, although not the xingu one never touches plants.

A well fed Panaque wont damage any plant.By well fed i mean one that has everyday availiable some kind of vegetable or fruit to eat when he feels like it.That way he wont damage any plant because he will have an alternative to eat when he is hungry.But if for any reason he doesnt have this available,he may damage plants.It is not certain that he will damage them but he may do it.
As for limitations about the plants he may damage,yes there are.Panaque will not damage plants with very fine leaves for him to graze on.Also he must be very hungry to damage Anubias and even more hungry to eat Java fern.But even if he eats them,he will only damage one or two leaves.

cheers thats some great advice,i already add veg for my severums so that will work fine. i have a goldie plec in the tank to its about 10cm at the mo the panaque i am thinking of aqquiring is around 15 would this pose a prob. Also my filtartion is a 1500ltr pump on a juwel jumbo internal box filter, an eiheim pro 2 600ltr a tetra tec 700 700ltr, i know litte about the large panaque in regards to wood gettting into the filter but can it damage filters in this way, i do a weekly 25 gallon change would this be enough.

ben

The wood getting into the filter shouldn't pose a problem to the actual pump unit - not if your filter is working as it should at least, becasue you should have plent of filter media to stop the wood from getting to the impeller. In your Eheim (assuming yours is a 2128 like mine) for example, you have the first layer of "stone macaroni" and then a sponge, then two layers of biomedia (little "stone peas") and another sponge type layer. If the wood gets through that, it's very small pieces and then the filter should have no problem with it.

It will of course clog up the filter more quickly than if you didn't have "sawdust" in the water, but that's the only real problem.

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Mats

Thats great, im keeping plecs from the xingu and my temp is 28 is that fine for the panaque.

ben

That's a darn good question [seeing as I just asked the same thing in the Cat-eLog forum] - I'd expect so, since it's from Xingu...

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Mats

cool thanks for that mats

ben