PlanetCatfish.com

Bog wood, Rocks, Plants?

Caves and meaty foods too

I think you will find this article very useful.
http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... cle_id=241

There have also been several forum threads on this fish that a quick search will turn up.

-Shane

Ask if your supplier would be willing to hold the P. compta you are buying for two weeks before you take delivery. Offer to make a deposit to show your good faith.
I am recommending these things because you are too young and inexperienced to be expected to know how to properly acclimate freshly imported wild specimens, have the needed medications and if any are going to die, they will occur mostly during the first two weeks.
I raise these fish and I find all I need are earth worm sticks and frozen blood worms. You may find it is difficult to find earth worm sticks so use Hikari Carnivore tablet foods instead.
Best of luck to you.

Leopardfrogplec wrote:- Olivia - Please do not say they need 5 Zebra plecs as company how much money is an 11yearold expected to have? (Answer; £336.78 to start with, if you have to know.)

They don't need 5 zebra plecs as company... They need 10! Nah I'm just kidding.

The article Shane posted is a great guide and should tell you basically all you need to know. Although I don't keep P. compta, it would feel quite at home with my Hypancistrus. The only things they need are places to hide in that they can squeeze into (I use clay caves as well as driftwood with holes in it) as well as a good level of current. I go for about 10x the tank volume per hour (ie. 90 L would need 900 L per hour turnover).

Larry (apistomaster) brings up a very good point about acclimatising wild caught specimens. A common issue among loricariids that are newly bought is that they do not feed. Frozen bloodworms are an excellent food to help get some of the pickier loricariids eating in your aquarium.

Is this your first fish tank? I ask because I still remember when I was 11 and starting my first fish tank (at least, the first one that wasn't my parents'). I was pretty ambitious at the time but my experience and knowledge were not always up to the challenge. I would not recommend most ornamental plecs to beginners primarily due to their price and their shy habits (the shy habits won't be a problem in your tank because your just keeping them with glass cats); many beginner bumps can become expensive mistakes when you are keeping something with a P. compta price tag on them. Since you're taking the time to do research I'm sure you're familiar with many basic concepts, but I just want to double-check and make sure that you are aware of things such as the Nitrogen cycle; you do not want to have a newly cycling tank with fish as pricy as P. compta.

[Mod edit: Fix minor typo --Mats ]

I believe it is the responsibility of the experienced hobbyists to help mentor our successors so they get off to the best possible start.
I wish I had mentors but I had to learn on my own when I first began keeping fish. I was about 11 years old myself when I began or perhaps a year younger. That was about 1964/65.
No internet and often inaccurate info from the magazines but I was so dedicated to fish that my parents helped me open my fish shop when I was only 15 years old. It was way too much work for such a young age but the shop did well and I was able to add on to it until I had the largest fish shop in Idaho, USA by that time I was 17 in 1969. Between the front retail sales tanks and my back room quarantine and breeding tanks I had about 160 fish tanks by the time I was 17. I began breeding and raising wild Brown/Blue Discus in July 1969 during the same week as the the first moon landing so it was a very memorable year. I was the fish guru in my region at the time. No one near me had ever bred wild Discus and fancy domestic Discus were just coming out about then but I never had any until many years later.

Suckermouth wrote:Since you're taking the time to do research I'm sure you're familiar with many basic concepts, but I just want to double-check and make sure that you are aware of things such as the Nitrogen cycle; you do not want to have a newly cycling tank with fish as pricy as P. compta.

Yes indeed. Do check out the fishkeeping basics article in Shane's World.

Also, it's a good idea to post up some pictures of the tank you are planning to keep them in. With pictures, it is very easy to give advice on what can be improved.

Hope this helps.

I put some old L134 out to pasture in my planted 125 gal Tetra tank and did not provide any caves but I do have several large pieces of Malaysian Bog Wood in it. The L134 adults dug underneath the wood and made their own caves.
One way or another they do like having some caves. I use only enough caves to give my breeders a spawning location and to increase the most dominant males' spawning caves.
In general, I believe that competition is helpful when trying to breed plecos. . The females and less dominant males hide under sponge filters and a few branches of wood I provided.
I only use about 1/4 inch of substrate in my breeding tanks so digging their own caves really isn't an option.