My Bristlenose Pleco Kills my Gourami

[didysis]

Sounds like he needs more food

 

[Jenny420]

 

[Bschowa]

How often do you feed him?

 

[Jenny420]

I feed him an algae wafer (little algae wafer from walmart in the pouch) every-night with a few flakes right before I tun the lights off. About two to three days out of a week I replace the algae wafer and flake with a small piece of blanched veggie, like string bean, squash, etc.

 

[Jenny420]

For some reason the new pictures aren't showing on here.

 

[didysis]

How large is the pleco?? from what I read sounds like almost 5 inches??

 

[Jenny420]

He is only about 2 inches long now.

 

[Starka]

He doesn't look like a BN, to me and I have three of them. Maybe try feeding him meat like brine shrimp or bloodworms. It make take him off of attacking fish.

Can you get different types of plecos to breed?

 

[jetajockey]

@JetaJocky, yeah, I am sure, I have watched him do everything. There is a possibility that the DG accidentally decided to sleep near or in his cave, in that case, I can imagine that it may have gotten stuck. Still, last night, both fish were perfectly healthy, I noticed the pleco trying to suck the gourami, but nothing too aggressive, and nothing that the gourami couldn't swim away from..

How long has this tank been running and how long have the fish been in there?

 

[Bschowa]

the pictures are showing up for me,


from the new pictures it does look like a bristlenose, i can see the tips forming, and it seems like you are feeding it enough, does it eat everything that you put in there? or is there still remnants of leftovers the next day?

 

[LyndaB]

@JetaJocky, yeah, I am sure, I have watched him do everything.

Unless you quite literally do nothing but sit in front of that tank 24 hours a day, you really haven't watched him do everything. Sometimes we think we know their behavior but things change when the lights go out.

 

[Starka]

The spots look like my BN pleco, but not the stripes. Weird.
Though he is a cool lookin pleco!

 

[Bschowa]

i would say add some more hiding spots and give him an extra large slice of whatever you normal feed him and see how much he eats,

adding hiding spots might make him feel less stressed out, if he was stressed out because he had no where to hide then he might have felt threatened by the Gourami causing him to lash out and kill it

 

[Maltimomma]

I have bn in all of my tanks and have never seen them go after any fish other than another bn and then only when I drop wafers. They don't bother the plants either. I have dg in my 29 gallon and no issues. I have angels in my two 55 gallon tanks with bn. This is very strange.

 

[Jenny420]

Well sorry it took so long, but occasionally he will leave like a little chunk of veggie. Sometimes a little bit of algae wafer would be leftover in there. I am sure when the DG was in there he would get one of those freeze dried bloodworms here and there if he felt inclined to eat it. I found it amusing that the pleco would go almost to the water surface, and at frist I had no idea what he was doing but after sitting there trying to figure it out, I realized that he scrapes some of the baby snails off of the tank walls.

The tank was set up and running without fish since about June of last year, (I really couldn't decide what exactly I wanted in the tank) I got three feeder guppies and the BN in August, (the feeder guppies basically got stuck to the filter, so I don't know if the BN killed them, he never was aggressive to them, all I know is that the scales were missing from them too.) then in November I got the DG.

He wouldn't swim away from the DG though. Instead he would kind of stalk it, and when he got the chance, he would try to latch on to him. The DG always swam away though. The only thing that concerned me more than that was when he would dart around, sometimes he would body slam the DG, but I have only seen him actually make contact that way once, and that was when the DG was peeking near his little cave. Most of the time I believe he was just showing off.

I am assuming that he just got the DG in his sleep, or that the DG wandered into his cave that night. I can imagine that in the confined space, the pleco slamming the gourami would be fatal. I wasn't there to see how that went down. I just know that both of them were pretty peaceful before I turned the lights off.

 

[Jenny420]

By the way, another thing I have noticed is that his dots are more prominent when he is stressed. When is he just chillin' his stripes are more prominent.

It isn't really the lighting because if I can catch him in chill made tonight he will most likely be displaying his stripes more than dots.

 

[LyndaB]

Maybe he's a hybrid.....

 

[Jenny420]

I haven't thought of that possibility.

So far, I haven't been able to catch him being still and visible, but if I did, he has the stripey camouflage pattern.

I figured since his favorite food is string beans that I would put a little bigger piece in there for him and split it lengthwise so I could put three or four freeze dried blood worms in it like a burrito. Let's just say I couldn't catch him on camera because his little cave is too dark to get a picture of him, but he seemed more eager to eat that than the regular string bean. I finally found out that he doesn't just carry his food in there, he kind of pushes it with his nose into the cave. So I just took the string bean remains out of there, and he has eaten the bloodworms I assume, along with the soft parts of the inside of the bean, he left the tougher skin.

I guess since there is virtually no algae growing in the tank itself that he would be irate and hungrier than normal.

This morning he was sitting on his driftwood pretty happily and swam back to his cave when he saw me.

 

[Pton46]

Maybe try a more aggressive fish, like a Jeweled Cichlid or Convict, something that can hold its own....you are going to need to upgrade your 10 gallon at more point anyway.