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I went to a private breeder brought a pleco and a bristle nose, the bristle nose is about 8-12cm roughly. Both tanks had all common plecos with 2 cichlids and other one all bristlenose, all the plecos seems pretty active swimming around etc and few had some of their fins bite off by the looks of it but I picked the most heathiest one in top shape, perfect.

All the bristle nose's in the tank how ever all had these white marks on them, kinda like suck marks from other bristlenoses in the same tank (the tanks were all empty like no decorations nor gravel)

My pleco seems to be normal for a pleco i think since its my first time owning one, first day he just found a spot to freeze on but now he swims around in the day rarely sometime about 3-4 times a day when no one is watching or far away from the tank. At night his more active scouting the tank for food etc...

My bristle nose on the other hand has been sucking off at a new driftwood i brought on the same day, he has found a little gap on the bottom behide it and started to dig under and kinda made a hole from the back of the wood under the gravel to the front, not a bad hole, now my ottos and clown loaches love to hide too now and proberly have a quite party with mr bristle nose.

Anyways the problem lies that my bristle nose isnt as active as my pleco, even at night when i sat in the dark with some light sheading from my kitchen only see the pleco move around but not him... (sat like 30mins interval like 5 times from 10pm to 3am) Woke up this morning to find him just above the driftwood to stright up to the heater and behide that. He saw me and ran back down under the driftwood.

It kinda gives me a sense his sick... when i brought him he had like kinda suck spots on him... I thought he proberly just heal after a while... as long as he looked active in that tank..

but now im thinking is he sick? or just suck spots which will heal?

Vinh.

Hang on.. just notice my bristle nose is not brown like most the ones ive seen, its like this bristlenose pic above, it is like black or very dark black-brown. The patches look like the fish above. I thought my fish was that type of above bristlenose but it dont have white spots.

Yeah, I am cross posting a bit. For those of you that have heard me talk about my old female Ancistrus ("Big Momma Pleco) that used to jump out of the tank and land in the power filter to eat algae... she is the fish pictured above!!! I passed her on to my friend Francine in WDC before leaving for Venezuela in 2000. She was purchased originally in Bellingham, Washington in the early 1990s and later lived in Pullman, WA until 1997 before moving to Washington DC.
-Shane
PS Francine is also featured in the newest TFH magazine.

hmmm my pl*co seems to have some sort of red patch on the top of his head
sorry i have no pics of him
and my female does not
i bought him with the red patch and it still hasnt gone away is this a suck mark?