pleco not cleaning
- Thread starter beaver8888
- Start date
the reason your pleco doesn't "clean"is because that isn't it's job it's a fish not a vacume.these fish eat real food not fish turds.plecos don't or can't allways eat algae anyways.think of it like this even if it did "clean"where would the waste from the pleco go?they can't eat their own waste so you must be the one who cleans this mess so go get that gravel vac and get to work.
how big are the oscars and how big is the filter?you allready push your tank with 2 oscars AND a 3 inch pleco.in a 30 gal.without proper filtration and cleaning you will have fish soup in no time .plus all of those fish are hungry greedy eaters i mean come on a 3 inch pleco can make turds twice or three times the size of their body so do the math.thats a lot of poop.
Not directed at you, beaver, or anyone else in particular.
Plecos don't do anything. He'll chew a little green off your glass every now and then but they mostly stick to sucking on wood and crapping everywhere. Plecos are the biggest scam in the aqarium industry, in my opinon. If you want one because it looks cool (kinda) or because its behavior is interesting (not really) than fine, get one and spend hours every week cleaning up after it. But if you expect IT to clean, don't bother. People think that because they're a "bottom feeder" that they'll eat anthing on the bottom of the tank. Wrong. I don't know how this fallacy gets propagated, but I don't see many fish stores trying to stop it.
Plecos don't do anything. He'll chew a little green off your glass every now and then but they mostly stick to sucking on wood and crapping everywhere. Plecos are the biggest scam in the aqarium industry, in my opinon. If you want one because it looks cool (kinda) or because its behavior is interesting (not really) than fine, get one and spend hours every week cleaning up after it. But if you expect IT to clean, don't bother. People think that because they're a "bottom feeder" that they'll eat anthing on the bottom of the tank. Wrong. I don't know how this fallacy gets propagated, but I don't see many fish stores trying to stop it.
it's not that fish stores nessesarly don't try to stop this story it's just that people won't listen.do you know how many people i try to explane this to a week.too many,too many.this is a common fish urban legend right up there with "it will only grow to the size of the tank"and "my fish have been in a ten gallon for years without a water change and everything is fine". if you notice i allways harp about the fact that no bottom feeder will clean your tank.this is the worst legend and i have been trying to dispell this for a while now.you know i get people who ask for an algae eating fish and i tell them try a bushynose pleco as they are more likly to eat algae than a regular pleco then i show them the price and the customer changes their mind and goes back to the common pleco.then i show them a tank full of hungry common plecos,full of algae and show then that plecos don't realy eat that much algae and still they buy one anyways.my point:the common customer or soon to be rookie asking us questions doesn't care untill the fish is on the brink of death and then it's important that"they know the facts and learn"despite the fact that this is the same person you just told not to do whatever they did to screw-up and kill their fish. i can rant forever on this subject
I hear you, man. I know you're not guilty of this, but fish stores generally do not do enough to discourage this myth (I'm mainly talking about Petco, etc here). Just by keeping so many in the store they help spread it. Then people see them sucking on the glass (of course there's never anything else in the tanks with the plecos) and they get the idea that they chow on algae all day. They're prominent in the store so people buy them and they're prominent in the store BECAUSE people buy them, but no one understands why they do. It's practically a given that you'll have a pleco in any tank among a certain set. Some barbs, etc, etc, and of course a pleco. Cichlids and blah blah, and, oh, a pleco. And then no one understands why they die. "Plecos don't really live that long - I've had four different ones in my community tank." FEED THEM OR STOP BUYING THEM.
I think the best algae eaters are the otto's. I had right much brown algae in my 20 at one time. I bought 4 of those little fish and they went to town and had it all cleaned up in a few days! Only drawback is larger fish might make a meal of them. I like the bristlenose plecos too but they are a pain to find around here.
The main point here is.. although these fish eat algae they dont only eat algae. Your need to suppliment their diet with sinking bottom feeder foods.
Personally plecos are among my favorite fish, probably cause i bought mine cause i thought he was cool. I never intended mine to do a certain task, And clean my tank.
Personally plecos are among my favorite fish, probably cause i bought mine cause i thought he was cool. I never intended mine to do a certain task, And clean my tank.