Adopted a Pleco, advise.

[Gakkan]

Hello all.

I've just adopted a common Pleco, my little brother was gifted him when he was 10 and obviously lost interest.
So the Pleco sat in a 35lt tank for about 5 years, he's now about 6 inches long, I'd personally forgot about the poor guy because I don't live there. But a few weeks ago I went round for dinner and saw him sat at the bottom all cramped so decided to take him.
I kept him in the tank for a few weeks and just upgraded to a 75lt, I know it's not a perfect size, but it's all I could afford atm, he loves it now, swimming about and I build him a slate cave to hide under, been feeding him cucumber and I added a sand substrate a few live plants and the old filter media to the new filter, so it's cycled quite well now.

So far so good, now I've slowly introduced some more fish, I now have

The Pleco
1 powder blue gourami
1 dwarf chichlid
1 silver shark
2 black widows

So far I think I've done everything ok, the water is fine, I've been testing PH and declorinating when doing water changes, I'm wondering if this is my stock limit, the tank looks quite bare still, I aim to add some more plants, but would also like another 2 black widows and maybe a few bottom feeders, either loaches or corys. Any advise on what else I could add would be great.

Thanks =)

 

[Luananeko]

No, you don't have room for more fish. In fact, you're overstocked already... 75 liters is roughly 20 gallons, yes? Here's the minimum tank size for each of the fish you have currently...

Common Pleco - get up to 18" long, huge bio loads, needs 125g tank
1 powder blue gourami - this one is fine, only needs 10g
1 dwarf chichlid - depends on the dwarf cichlid, but most need 20g so it should be ok
1 silver shark - schooling fish that reaches 16" long, needs 125g tank
2 black widows - schooling fish, but should be fine in your tank once you add 3+ to round out their school

You really should rehome the pleco and silver shark unless you plan on getting a 125 gallon tank in the next 6 months. I highly recommend plugging any stocking plans into the aqadvisor.com calculator as a ballpark estimate of what fish will fit in your tank. It's not perfect and needs additional research and experience to fine tune and verify, but its a great first step.

 

[Huro]

I would also hold off on adding more plants until as Luananeko pointed out you rehome the pleco. He will inadvertently uproot most plants as he moves around given his size vs the tank size.

 

[Gakkan]

Thanks for the reply, I thought this might be the case. Obviously it's an upgrade for the Pleco, he's been 6 inches for about a few years, will this extra room start off another growth spurt? Or is that a silly question?

 

[Luananeko]

Thanks for the reply, I thought this might be the case. Obviously it's an upgrade for the Pleco, he's been 6 inches for about a few years, will this extra room start off another growth spurt? Or is that a silly question?

Yes, he will go back to growing now that he has more space. What happens when a fish is put in too small a tank is that when they reach the limits of how large they can grow in a tank they stop growing externally, but their organs continue growing into each other. Now that the external limit is lessened, it will resume growing externally at the same pace as its organs were already growing. It will not take long for it to reach the tank limit and for it to resume growing its organs into each other, causing serious health issues. Plecos are VERY fast growers.

 

[Huro]

Kudos btw for taking the initiative to pull him out of the smaller and give him a better life

 

[Huro]

*smaller tank*

 

[Gakkan]

Yes, he will go back to growing now that he has more space. What happens when a fish is put in too small a tank is that when they reach the limits of how large they can grow in a tank they stop growing externally, but their organs continue growing into each other. Now that the external limit is lessened, it will resume growing externally at the same pace as its organs were already growing. It will not take long for it to reach the tank limit and for it to resume growing its organs into each other, causing serious health issues. Plecos are VERY fast growers.

That's quite fascinating, had no idea it worked like that, as you can probably tell I'm quite new to this, just wanted to do right by the little guy (soon to be big guy) hehe. Will have to talk to my local garden centre then, thanks for the advice.