New Pleco's

Subject: New Pleco's Wed Mar 09, 2011 6:52 pm

I have added two Bushynose Pleco's to my tank. I have not had any pleco's in my tank for a couple of years and missed having Them. I use to have a common pleco, but once he out grew my tank I traded it back to my LFS for a fish more suited to the tank that I had. I will have to try and get some pics.

Subject: Re: New Pleco's Wed Mar 09, 2011 10:20 pm

Cool! Congrats on the plecs. I used to have some BNs and liked them very much.

Subject: Re: New Pleco's Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:38 am

Conrats! I'm pretty sure I have three females and a male, CW. The male is just now showin' his bristles. I'm hopin' to breed 'em before long.

I'll tell ya what, I much prefer BN's over anything else for algae control. After continually reading how great Siamese algae eaters were for algae, especially after reading all of Takashi Amano's nature aquarium articles in TFH, I bought some a while ago. They don't hold a candle to BNs, IMO. I've been very dissappointed by the SAEs. I'm constantly dealing with algae in the SE Asian tank I set up, a 29 gallon w/ 4 SAEs. They pick at it but have never kept up with it. I never see algae in the Amazon planted tank with the BNs, which is a 55 gallon with only four of 'em. Now if I could just keep the ramshorn population under control. Jeez, them suckers are hard on amzon swords.

Maybe I expected more from tje SAEs than I should have.

Good luck with the BNs and enjoy!

WYite

Subject: Re: New Pleco's Thu Mar 10, 2011 5:58 pm

I have read that BN's are great at algae control. I have 3 SAE and for the algea I have had they have been OK, but my algae has never been a problem. I had a 5 gallon tank that was bad and it would fill with hair algae, so I use to pull it out and put it in the tank with the SAE's and they would eat up.

I will enjoy having pleco's to watch again.

Subject: Re: New Pleco's Thu Mar 10, 2011 8:38 pm

I agree the BN's are great for algae. They like driftwood too. I have heard SAEs aren't great for algae so I never tried any. I've become more of a loach fan now than a pleco fan. They are not great for algae but clean up food off the bottom very well.

The Turtle Whisperer Posts : 1930

I have a lone SAE. It doesn't eat algae ever. Never ever. In fact I had to move it into a tank of much much smaller fish because it started picking at anything big.