Question about Plecos

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Puriti

Aquarium Advice Addict
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May 10, 2005
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Massachusetts
My friend bethany went to get her fish for her tank project at petsmart and she got a pleco. Now she calls them regular old algae eaters and she just got it and the guy said it would be good. Now I told her that if it's a common pleco that it can get to be a foot or longer. She's protesting that it's not but it looked like it to me. The question she wants to know, if it is a common pleco how fast will it grow?
 
That depends. James' mom had a common pleco in her 29 gal tank that grew VERY quickly. We bought one the same day of the same size (it was buy one get one free, don't you LOVE those days. :D ). Hers was alot larger than ours was when we put hers in our tank.
 
In my experiances with common plecos is that they grow slow. But then I had it in a 42g which is way to small but he grew slow anyways. Right now my friend has a Common Pleco in a 10g. The thing is like 7inches long it can barely turn around :( I tell him that he should take it to the LFS and get a couple of otos instead but does he listen no :evil: Also it is only like 1 and a half years old so it grew pretty fast. I guess it depends on its enviroment like tank size and stuff.Sorry I cant help you more. :(
Good Luck
 
You know...I have a customer who comes in to look at the fish all the time. He told me that there are 2 variations of the common pleco. One that is spotted (darker, with lighter spots) and one that is more brown (the usual common pleco). When he comes in, he looks for these in the tanks, and if we have some, he'll get one. He said that in all of his years of fish keeping, those common plecos only max out at about 5 inches.

Now..I have a common now, and the darker one with the spots, and in 3 years, it has gotten to be only about 5 inches. Coincidence? Hard to tell.

There are many plecos that look like commons that are not. There are also alot of commons that look like other plecos. Without a picture, it'd be hard to tell. Any chance you can get one?

High nitrates also impede growth. So, the cleaner your tank, the faster the fish will grow as well.

HTH
 
She took it to school so I dunno. She said it wasn't spotted but it looked it to me. I'll have to get a better look when i go to school tomorrow cuz I'm not going in today because of my road test...
 
Our common pleco is closing in quickly on 7 inches. He's huge. He doesn't fit in the castle anymore.
 
My common pleco grew pretty fast over 6 months. IMO, it all depends on your water condition, the foods, and how often you do your water changes.

Feeding often along with lots of water changes can promote growth. I'm guessing it is a common pleco since they are so readily available and the most common sold.
 
As I understand it "Common Pleco" is a bit of a misleading term and it is really several species that make up what we call the "Common Pleco" not just P. Hypostomus. It would follow to me that then there would possibly be a smaller species in this bunch.
 
I'd have to agree with the others that there are most likely varieties of pleco that all look the same, but may reach different sizes. Maybe with as much as people like them (they are cool fish) there will be some research done into how to tell them apart.

I know my particular 'common' pleco is dark brown with light brown spots most of the time. although he changed to a really cool lighter shade of brown when I put him into a red bucket for transport. And he's gone from about 2 1/2 inches to just over 4 inches in about 3 months. I fully expect him to get a LOT bigger still. There are 15" pleco's in the pet store he came from that look identical, along with the even larger ones in the pond out back that again look identical.

Hopefully someday they'll make a camera or a tricorder or somethin that we could point at an animal and have it say "You have found a felis domesticus" etc.
 
Hopefully someday they'll make a camera or a tricorder or somethin that we could point at an animal and have it say "You have found a felis domesticus" etc.
We could only wish that fish identification was that easy. :D Try identifying some of the African Cichlid species.
 
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