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I have a pair of L204 flash plecos I bought a couple of weeks ago. They are adults but exact age is unknown.
They don't seem to be very sociable or active. The male seems to do very little except to sit in his cave. The female gets around the tank a little bit more but only at night. They also do not appear to eat any great amount of food which I supply but I hear them munching away on wood at night and there is evidence of poop.

I have never had any reasonable sized pleco before and these are my first pleco adults as I have only gotten juvies in other breeds. Could they be sulking after their move to my tank? Will they snap out of it and become more outgoing in the future, or will I be looking at an empty tank forever? Should I consider adding a couple of juvi bn's to draw them out a bit?

The tank is a 3ft, with a large canister filter and eheim internal filter. Heater at 27c. The only company in the tank is one plackat betta male.

I have read conflicting levels of what ph flash should be kept in. Can anyone shed some light on what is a good ph, or are they fairly easy going with that? The sheer amount of wood in the tank seems to pull the ph down, should I get a couple of chunks of coral to try to stablise it? The tank is bare bottom, for ease of cleaning.

Brengun,

I have kept my L204s in PH 6.2 and they were fine but I've read they prefer PH 8.

As for the age I can tell you they are roughly 6+ years as per my source in OZ and not from the seller.

Cheers

Hi,

L204 are from the Rio San Alessandro, a dark water river. For maintenance, I guess you can target a low pH, but over all, a very acidic and soft water. I have no idea of the pH I maintain them in, but conductivity is under 200 micro-siemens and the tank, full of driftwoods, has a very dark color. The water is like in a cup of tea, heavy filtration, heavy stream, lot of O2... 6 L204 for 300 liters and I see them regularly, not because they are showing, just because my tank is made for it. Every driftwood or root is placed in a maner that I can see under it...

On mature (or at least sub-adults) individuals, a good sign of health is their body odontodes (for males). If your fishes look like a hair brush on the second half of the body, that means you're in the right... if the water is too hard, or too cold, they will loose their odontodes...

L204 are from the Rio San Alessandro, a dark water river. For maintenance, I guess you can target a low pH,

The Alejandro is actually a white water river, so pH would be around neutral. Reports suggest a pH of well over 8, but I suspect this to be seasonal during very low water levels.

Fish from white water rivers are generally more adaptable, and the L204 don't seem bothered in the slightest about water chemistry.

I keep these fish in slightly acid water (6.7).

I would not go below 6.0 though.

sorry, I have to check my sources Seems I still have to learn a lot about all those L... I'll be back when my homeworks will be done (geography)...

and maybe I'll have to change my tank parameters...

Tofi-ashamed

Thanks for the tip kingt, at least that expains them taking a little longer than youngies to settle to a new tank.
I got a couple of easy to put in and take out chunks of coral which I hope will stabilize the water ph as the wood and the beaverlike chewing of it is dropping the ph a little low.

There is also a wonderful chunk of dwiftwood which my clown loaches currently live inside. I have a big piece of mangrove wood which will not fit in the flash tank, but it will fit in the clownies tank. I might see if the clownies will trade.

My water doesn't turn a brown color from tannins as I have a purigen bag in the canister filter which cleans the water. Its hard enough to get a glimpse of the flashies without brown water as well. You wouldn't think two big fish like that could hide so well. They kind of blend in to the wood when they aren't actually inside it.

Loricariids aren't exactly known for their outgoing and outstanding natures, so cave dwelling is pretty much all you're going to get out of ancistrinae stock, anyways.